Happy Release Day!
Congrats Suzanne
on the release today of
The Blue Window!
The Blue Window by Suzanne Berne
Women's Literary Fiction, 272 pages
Published January 10, 2023 by by Scribner / Marysue Rucci Books
From the Orange Prize–winning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood comes a riveting novel about a therapist whose attempts to unlock the most difficult cases of her life—those of her son, and of her mother—reveal that the bigger the secret you’re concealing, the more it conceals you.
Secrets abound in Lorna’s family. Her mother Marika, who survived the Nazi occupation of Holland, abandoned the family when Lorna and her brother Wade were just seven and twelve years old. The reason she left, and her whereabouts afterward, were shrouded in mystery. As is a darker secret Marika has repressed for nearly seventy years.
Now that Lorna, a respected psychotherapist, has a child of her own, she’s determined to make Marika a part of their lives. But it’s been a struggle for nearly two decades. Lorna’s son Adam is creative, passionate, and uncomfortable in his own skin. Three weeks before the story opens, he abruptly returns home from college after an incident that he refuses to discuss. And he refuses to be called by his name. He refers to himself as “A” for “anti-matter” and insists that Lorna do the same.
The more Lorna tries to get Adam to talk, the more he withdraws. So, when she gets the call that Marika has had a fall and is incapacitated, she sees an opportunity to bond with Adam on the long drive north to Vermont, and to reconnect with her mother by nursing her back to health.
But how do you care for people you can’t understand, and who don’t want to be understood? As Lorna confronts this question, she must face secrets of her own, which she has tried to ignore by spending her life analyzing other people.
A deft and compelling exploration of family dynamics infused with suspense, Blue Window shows what happens to people who hide from themselves—and the act of imagination it takes to find them.
My thoughts about The Blue Window ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First line—"You would assume A stood for Adam."
Whoa, talk about some dysfunction. And there's Lorna right there in the middle of it all, stuck between her mother Marika, with her lifetime of secrets, and her son Adam, who wants to be called A for Anti-matter. What? Oh, and he's got secrets of his own to deal with. You would think that Lorna, a psychotherapist, should be able to figure out her own family, but in this case the 'patients' are too close and there are too may walls surrounding all of them.
I have to admit, the cover on this book is what first grabbed my attention. I had not heard of this author, or this book before, so it was the cover that did it for me. But I am so glad I chose to read it. This is a story of family, even with all of its dysfunction, triumphing over all. Holding onto secrets has the potential to destroy—ourselves and those all around us—in particular, those whom we love.
I came to love all of the characters but I think probably my favorite was Marika, such a feisty, quirky old woman. And the way she took to her grandson from the beginning was heartwarming. They truly bonded, two outcasts with deep dark secrets.
Pick up The Blue Window and give it a read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am still thinking about these characters. I know they will touch you as well.
I received a copy of The Blue Window from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.
About the author
Suzanne Berne is the author of five novels, The Blue Window; The Dogs of Littlefield; The Ghost at the Table; A Perfect Arrangement; and A Crime in the Neighborhood, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly Great Britain’s Orange Prize. She lives outside of Boston with her husband. ~ Amazon
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