What do you think?
Rate this book
Coconut
Coconut is a love story that weaves intimate life portraits across three generations and four continents.
Mary is a young artist who struggles to build hope out of tragedy. Explorations in mathematics free Henry’s mind, but what can free his soul? Catherine looks into the mirror and asks, Who am I? She cannot find her path forward until she first finds the path back to her beginnings. James dreams of building a theory of human culture, but as his dream gets closer, his life veers off course. Calvert is at the start of his life journey. As the Andes come into view through the airliner windows, he's flooded with that feeling— when you don't know if it's a place you’ve been or a place you've only heard of.
Across generations and across the globe, the five navigate family, adoption, loss, and love in a world that pits social expectations against their innermost dreams. From the American Midwest to New York, Provincetown, Europe, Africa, and South America— Coconut is a story of identity and the power of love to unleash the truth within us.
Praise for Coconut:
"What is family—is it shaped through blood, through community, through love? What is the family and parenting we need to feel whole and know ourselves authentically? These are big questions and in Coconut John and Elizabeth Clay have written a searching generational novel that tackles it all with originality and surprise. Most importantly I came to love all the characters that wind through this novel. Somehow each of them broke and healed my heart. A powerful debut."
— Victoria Redel, author of Before Everything
"Coconut makes a deep impression. The story haunts chapter by chapter, following the main characters on a mystery journey. Surging with poetic description, pages sing like Walcott’s Omeros and Joyce’s Ulysses. The characters stay real, like people we know or people we would like to be. This is a story that will resonate with readers across generations."
— George Klawitter, CSC, author of A Little World Made Cunningly
"Coconut is a meticulously crafted, deeply moving novel that exemplifies the complexities of human experience. The rhythm of the lyrical prose is astounding. It is a nuanced, multigenerational family saga that intertwines lives and memories across time periods and locations. Adoption, especially, with all of its intricate ramifications, is deftly explored. Coconut will satisfy readers who long for real depth. It sent shivers down my spine."
— Mark Katzman, author of M7
A captivating and poignant story that traverses diverse cultures and generations, Coconut seamlessly weaves a narrative of heartbreak and hope. I felt deeply connected to each character, like I was right there with them every step of the way.
— Debbie Yee Lan Wong, author of The Same A Traveler’s Quest for Redemption and Peace
"I’ve spent my life out there in the real world, living real-life adventures. Coconut is a novel that captures that sense of the real—from childhood dreams to grown-up adversities. And all in beautiful language. If you want to enjoy an engaging well-told story, this is it."
— J. Robert Harris, author of Way Out Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker
Mary is a young artist who struggles to build hope out of tragedy. Explorations in mathematics free Henry’s mind, but what can free his soul? Catherine looks into the mirror and asks, Who am I? She cannot find her path forward until she first finds the path back to her beginnings. James dreams of building a theory of human culture, but as his dream gets closer, his life veers off course. Calvert is at the start of his life journey. As the Andes come into view through the airliner windows, he's flooded with that feeling— when you don't know if it's a place you’ve been or a place you've only heard of.
Across generations and across the globe, the five navigate family, adoption, loss, and love in a world that pits social expectations against their innermost dreams. From the American Midwest to New York, Provincetown, Europe, Africa, and South America— Coconut is a story of identity and the power of love to unleash the truth within us.
Praise for Coconut:
"What is family—is it shaped through blood, through community, through love? What is the family and parenting we need to feel whole and know ourselves authentically? These are big questions and in Coconut John and Elizabeth Clay have written a searching generational novel that tackles it all with originality and surprise. Most importantly I came to love all the characters that wind through this novel. Somehow each of them broke and healed my heart. A powerful debut."
— Victoria Redel, author of Before Everything
"Coconut makes a deep impression. The story haunts chapter by chapter, following the main characters on a mystery journey. Surging with poetic description, pages sing like Walcott’s Omeros and Joyce’s Ulysses. The characters stay real, like people we know or people we would like to be. This is a story that will resonate with readers across generations."
— George Klawitter, CSC, author of A Little World Made Cunningly
"Coconut is a meticulously crafted, deeply moving novel that exemplifies the complexities of human experience. The rhythm of the lyrical prose is astounding. It is a nuanced, multigenerational family saga that intertwines lives and memories across time periods and locations. Adoption, especially, with all of its intricate ramifications, is deftly explored. Coconut will satisfy readers who long for real depth. It sent shivers down my spine."
— Mark Katzman, author of M7
A captivating and poignant story that traverses diverse cultures and generations, Coconut seamlessly weaves a narrative of heartbreak and hope. I felt deeply connected to each character, like I was right there with them every step of the way.
— Debbie Yee Lan Wong, author of The Same A Traveler’s Quest for Redemption and Peace
"I’ve spent my life out there in the real world, living real-life adventures. Coconut is a novel that captures that sense of the real—from childhood dreams to grown-up adversities. And all in beautiful language. If you want to enjoy an engaging well-told story, this is it."
— J. Robert Harris, author of Way Out Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker
415 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2025
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 24, 2025
Goodreads administration has asked me to state that I was given a free copy of this book in February 2025 in the form of galley proofs. It was digital and not paper or hardbound. I was asked to write a review before publication.
Coconut is a story of a journey, no, of two journeys, over many years, in many places, and through many life experiences.
The name Coconut seems strange for a book mostly set in Minnesota, northern Ohio, and the northeastern part of the US: Boston, Provincetown, MA, and New York City. I’ll come back to that.
The pull of place is very strong in the book. It evokes the snowy fields of Minnesota, the seashores of Massachusetts, the campuses of strict Roman Catholic colleges in the 1950s, the streets of Venezuela, the villages of Ghana, the pubs and offices of New York. This pull is achieved through very descriptive and imagistic writing, which is what I believe sets the book apart.
In short, the book is evocative of place but also time. The earliest scenes take place in the 1930s. The reader sees America through the eyes of young persons growing up in small towns during and after World War II, the surface-level stability of the 1950s, the turmoil of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the licentiousness of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the opened European landscape of the ‘90s, and the complexities of the 2000s. Music lyrics, titles of books, and artistic trends and names are used to create the temporal as well as the geographic context.
The theme of family—seeking family, what family means, why we need it, how even romantic loe is about family—is explored in a number of ways. The discussions about genetics v. culture, nature v. nurture are part of the theme of what family means. They intrude in the story at times, but the characters live in a world and think in a way that long-running academic/philosophical arguments about how much we are formed by genes and how much by culture do make some sense.
In a sense, the books is really two books, and perhaps that would have been a better idea, as the book is longer than some people would want to read—since we are not as patient with reading as we were one hundred years ago. One story is about a woman who finds herself pregnant—as did her own mother—and who places the baby girl for adoption. After that decision, Mary searches for meaning in a wild and promiscuous lifestyle while hoping to use her artistic skills to make a living during the 1970s and ‘80s. She feels broken and incomplete without her child. Finally succumbing to cancer in the 1990s, she dies too early for her own daughter to find her—and this search by daughter Catherine for her mother Mary is the core of the novel, I believe.
Catherine finds Mary’s being through her art and through the friends that knew her well in Mary’s Provincetown, MA community. This means trips from Minnesota, leaving her two children with her English transplant husband Alistair, who becomes the semi-villain of the story while Catherine searches for Mary’s past. Alistair does not understand her desire to connect with Mary; James Crossland, who lives in New York and it friends with Alan, one of Mary’s ex-lovers, does.
And that brings us to the second story in the pair. The Crossland family history is one of travel, adventure, high level academics, and at times, wandering and searching.
It is also a story of a family’s drifting away from mid-western, rock-ribbed Roman Catholicism. The women stay faithful; most of the men tolerate the church at best, except for one uncle who is ordained as a priest. Starting with Henry and his family in 1930s and 1940s Minnesota, the story of the Crosslands moves to the University of Notre Dame, where Henry teaches mathematics after earning his doctorate. The family grows, and Henry decides they should move to Ghana, West Africa, for him to teach there. Later, the family spends time in Venezuela, and later, Malaysia. James is Henry’s son, a man of deep intellect, wide interests, a broad swath of friends, Princeton musical training, and trouble finding stable employment. His life in New York seems to be drifting as well until Alan introduces him to two women visiting from Minnesota.
The two disparate stories: one of a woman searching for her roots, the other of a man with strong roots but somewhat disconnected from them—becomes one thread as Catherine and James decide on their first meeting to become lovers, Catherine divorces her obstreperous husband, James moves to Minnesota, Catherine and James marry, Catherine begins to root out her birth father’s identity, and life goes on.
As long and detailed as the novel is, some details are unexplained. James’ mother is in a wheelchair—why? Do Catherine’s two children live with her first husband? Why does James, clearly a man with intellectual strengths (I could not decipher some of his economic theory) not get a doctorate and become the economics guru he aspires to be? Does Catherine’s search for her parents become an obsession, and does that hurt her relationship with her adoptive parents?
Of the two threads, I have to say Catherine’s (and Mary’s) story is more engaging for me, but I am a daughter and mother who always knew my large, sprawling family. The idea of not knowing one’s mother is unthinkable to me and the search for family due to adoption situations has always held a fascination.
So why is the book titled Coconut? A macheted coconut brimming with milk is a symbol for the nourishment of true lovers for each other. One must read the novel to appreciate the metaphor. It is not an easy connection to the story of two lives coming together, but it does lend a certain poetry and symmetry.
Coconut is a story of a journey, no, of two journeys, over many years, in many places, and through many life experiences.
The name Coconut seems strange for a book mostly set in Minnesota, northern Ohio, and the northeastern part of the US: Boston, Provincetown, MA, and New York City. I’ll come back to that.
The pull of place is very strong in the book. It evokes the snowy fields of Minnesota, the seashores of Massachusetts, the campuses of strict Roman Catholic colleges in the 1950s, the streets of Venezuela, the villages of Ghana, the pubs and offices of New York. This pull is achieved through very descriptive and imagistic writing, which is what I believe sets the book apart.
In short, the book is evocative of place but also time. The earliest scenes take place in the 1930s. The reader sees America through the eyes of young persons growing up in small towns during and after World War II, the surface-level stability of the 1950s, the turmoil of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the licentiousness of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the opened European landscape of the ‘90s, and the complexities of the 2000s. Music lyrics, titles of books, and artistic trends and names are used to create the temporal as well as the geographic context.
The theme of family—seeking family, what family means, why we need it, how even romantic loe is about family—is explored in a number of ways. The discussions about genetics v. culture, nature v. nurture are part of the theme of what family means. They intrude in the story at times, but the characters live in a world and think in a way that long-running academic/philosophical arguments about how much we are formed by genes and how much by culture do make some sense.
In a sense, the books is really two books, and perhaps that would have been a better idea, as the book is longer than some people would want to read—since we are not as patient with reading as we were one hundred years ago. One story is about a woman who finds herself pregnant—as did her own mother—and who places the baby girl for adoption. After that decision, Mary searches for meaning in a wild and promiscuous lifestyle while hoping to use her artistic skills to make a living during the 1970s and ‘80s. She feels broken and incomplete without her child. Finally succumbing to cancer in the 1990s, she dies too early for her own daughter to find her—and this search by daughter Catherine for her mother Mary is the core of the novel, I believe.
Catherine finds Mary’s being through her art and through the friends that knew her well in Mary’s Provincetown, MA community. This means trips from Minnesota, leaving her two children with her English transplant husband Alistair, who becomes the semi-villain of the story while Catherine searches for Mary’s past. Alistair does not understand her desire to connect with Mary; James Crossland, who lives in New York and it friends with Alan, one of Mary’s ex-lovers, does.
And that brings us to the second story in the pair. The Crossland family history is one of travel, adventure, high level academics, and at times, wandering and searching.
It is also a story of a family’s drifting away from mid-western, rock-ribbed Roman Catholicism. The women stay faithful; most of the men tolerate the church at best, except for one uncle who is ordained as a priest. Starting with Henry and his family in 1930s and 1940s Minnesota, the story of the Crosslands moves to the University of Notre Dame, where Henry teaches mathematics after earning his doctorate. The family grows, and Henry decides they should move to Ghana, West Africa, for him to teach there. Later, the family spends time in Venezuela, and later, Malaysia. James is Henry’s son, a man of deep intellect, wide interests, a broad swath of friends, Princeton musical training, and trouble finding stable employment. His life in New York seems to be drifting as well until Alan introduces him to two women visiting from Minnesota.
The two disparate stories: one of a woman searching for her roots, the other of a man with strong roots but somewhat disconnected from them—becomes one thread as Catherine and James decide on their first meeting to become lovers, Catherine divorces her obstreperous husband, James moves to Minnesota, Catherine and James marry, Catherine begins to root out her birth father’s identity, and life goes on.
As long and detailed as the novel is, some details are unexplained. James’ mother is in a wheelchair—why? Do Catherine’s two children live with her first husband? Why does James, clearly a man with intellectual strengths (I could not decipher some of his economic theory) not get a doctorate and become the economics guru he aspires to be? Does Catherine’s search for her parents become an obsession, and does that hurt her relationship with her adoptive parents?
Of the two threads, I have to say Catherine’s (and Mary’s) story is more engaging for me, but I am a daughter and mother who always knew my large, sprawling family. The idea of not knowing one’s mother is unthinkable to me and the search for family due to adoption situations has always held a fascination.
So why is the book titled Coconut? A macheted coconut brimming with milk is a symbol for the nourishment of true lovers for each other. One must read the novel to appreciate the metaphor. It is not an easy connection to the story of two lives coming together, but it does lend a certain poetry and symmetry.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 15, 2025
This love story follows three generations and four continents. Have you ever questioned the definition of family? is it community or blood? How can know themselves authitically? This novel had me falling in love, and breaking my heart at the same time, and will leave a lasting impression. The characters and storyline is extremely relatable. As it explores birth parents, adoption, and adoptees. The underlying thread of identity and the power of love across place and time to unleash the truth within us is woven within this story.
July 29, 2025
This is a story that unfolds between three generations highlighting different struggles and wins in life in such varied circumstances. I love this book. Hoping to read more from the authors. Though I would prefer a more adaptable format for reading in the Thorium reader wherein it will not require for readers to constantly zoom in every turning of the page. Thank you Netgalley and Spaceboy Books LLC for this granted ARC!
June 30, 2025
Coconut makes a deep impression on readers. The story haunts chapter by chapter, following the main character on a mystery journey. Surging with poetic description, pages sing like Walcott’s Omeros and Joyce’s Ulysses. The characters stay real, like people we know or people we would like to be. This is a story that will resonate with readers across generations.
November 17, 2025
Coconut by John and Elizabeth Clay is a beautifully written, multi-generational love story that unfolds the way we naturally remember, in moments. The characters are raw and real, each searching for love, meaning, and connection. I was drawn deeper into their lives with each chapter, captivated by the subtle way two seemingly separate paths slowly intertwine. This book lingers with you.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews