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Intentional
In this novel, a woman’s friends and family deal with the aftermath of her suicide as they try to understand her reasons and their own roles.
The last Lily Cummings hears from her best friend, Dust Steward, is a text “I love U. Be.” Be what? Dust (shortened from Dusty) can never tell her, because she shoots herself with her husband’s gun in the fancy bathroom of their home’s luxurious new addition. Lily, 37, together with Dust’s husband, daughter, mother and neighbor, struggles with her grief, confusion and guilt. Dust left no note and had apparently been planning the suicide for some time. Why? A passionate environmentalist, Dust hated the house extension and its enormous carbon footprint—concerns that her husband, Robert, with his conservative political ambitions, dismissed. He also threatened to keep their daughter, Grace, from her if she tried to divorce. Now, he must face up to his “I’m not innocent….Everything she believed in, I smacked down. I did it.” With good cause or without, everyone wonders if they could have done more. Dust’s suicide becomes a catalyst for other major life changes elsewhere—a collapsing marriage, rapprochement with a long-gone mother, etc. Throughout this intelligent and perceptive novel, Arbor traces with strength and delicacy the many strands leading up to and away from a suicide. She brings out the textures of people’s lives through their in-jokes and little customs so that readers can feel the web of living connections that Dust was part of and left behind. The childhood friendship between Lily and Dust is shown to be full of the shared fears, hopes and joys that kept them friends into adulthood, which helps define the scope of loss. Though everyone tries to play detective to understand. Dust’s suicide, the answers are messy. After Dust’s death, one of her jigsaw puzzles, unfinished, lies gathering dust, the pieces never put together.
A thoughtful, sensitive but never saccharine exploration of what suicide leaves behind. --Kirkus Review
The last Lily Cummings hears from her best friend, Dust Steward, is a text “I love U. Be.” Be what? Dust (shortened from Dusty) can never tell her, because she shoots herself with her husband’s gun in the fancy bathroom of their home’s luxurious new addition. Lily, 37, together with Dust’s husband, daughter, mother and neighbor, struggles with her grief, confusion and guilt. Dust left no note and had apparently been planning the suicide for some time. Why? A passionate environmentalist, Dust hated the house extension and its enormous carbon footprint—concerns that her husband, Robert, with his conservative political ambitions, dismissed. He also threatened to keep their daughter, Grace, from her if she tried to divorce. Now, he must face up to his “I’m not innocent….Everything she believed in, I smacked down. I did it.” With good cause or without, everyone wonders if they could have done more. Dust’s suicide becomes a catalyst for other major life changes elsewhere—a collapsing marriage, rapprochement with a long-gone mother, etc. Throughout this intelligent and perceptive novel, Arbor traces with strength and delicacy the many strands leading up to and away from a suicide. She brings out the textures of people’s lives through their in-jokes and little customs so that readers can feel the web of living connections that Dust was part of and left behind. The childhood friendship between Lily and Dust is shown to be full of the shared fears, hopes and joys that kept them friends into adulthood, which helps define the scope of loss. Though everyone tries to play detective to understand. Dust’s suicide, the answers are messy. After Dust’s death, one of her jigsaw puzzles, unfinished, lies gathering dust, the pieces never put together.
A thoughtful, sensitive but never saccharine exploration of what suicide leaves behind. --Kirkus Review
ebook
First published January 30, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 26, 2015
This is a very thoughtful, sensitive and well written book. The characters feel like real people. The author's style of shifting from one character's perspective to another (using a close third person) is effective. Each character has a different personality and his/her own ideas about why Dust Steward committed suicide.Grief affects each of them differently, and ultimately leads to changes and new beginnings for some of them. The writing is clear and fluid. You'll love this book if you like Elizabeth Strout, Sue Miller, Alice McDermott, Alice Munro and Elizabeth Berg.
December 15, 2015
This is a well-crafted, attention-holding novel that begins with the suicide of the protagonist’s best friend. Lily has brought cleaning materials to remove the blood from the bathroom where Dust shot herself, but is too horrified to stay. From this startling event, one which you might ordinarily expect to occur later in a plot, the novel describes the impact of Dust’s suicide on the lives of her friends and family.
I have spent a good deal of time lately looking into what makes a novel environmental fiction or eco-fiction, and although Intentional does not purport to belong in that genre, as you discover Dust’s motivation, her passionate environmental activism becomes more than just a character trait.
Her husband, Robert, an ambitious businessman running for a second term as State Senator from a suburb of Detroit, bullies her into turning their home into a bigfoot mansion, complete with an enormous “master bedroom” and a kitchen as big as a gymnasium. He gradually breaks her heart with his renovations, intended to enhance his status in his bid for re-election. He destroys her cherished garden and cuts down the magnolia trees she loved. Every product he uses, including toxic weed killers, violates her deepest convictions. “She wanted to save the planet,” muses her neighbor Fred, “but even in her own house, she was ignored and ridiculed. The Be Green truck came whether she wanted it or not, the addition was built, and her garden was destroyed. She got worn down.”
Realtors are always coming to my door in my Detroit suburb announcing that they would like to purchase my house for a tear-down, which sounds to me like a personal threat. Besides, I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to live with more space than anyone reasonably needs, incurring a huge carbon footprint in the process. So I took enormous pleasure to find a big foot mansion unmasked as the perpetrator of the central event of a novel which remains compelling read until the very last page.
I have spent a good deal of time lately looking into what makes a novel environmental fiction or eco-fiction, and although Intentional does not purport to belong in that genre, as you discover Dust’s motivation, her passionate environmental activism becomes more than just a character trait.
Her husband, Robert, an ambitious businessman running for a second term as State Senator from a suburb of Detroit, bullies her into turning their home into a bigfoot mansion, complete with an enormous “master bedroom” and a kitchen as big as a gymnasium. He gradually breaks her heart with his renovations, intended to enhance his status in his bid for re-election. He destroys her cherished garden and cuts down the magnolia trees she loved. Every product he uses, including toxic weed killers, violates her deepest convictions. “She wanted to save the planet,” muses her neighbor Fred, “but even in her own house, she was ignored and ridiculed. The Be Green truck came whether she wanted it or not, the addition was built, and her garden was destroyed. She got worn down.”
Realtors are always coming to my door in my Detroit suburb announcing that they would like to purchase my house for a tear-down, which sounds to me like a personal threat. Besides, I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to live with more space than anyone reasonably needs, incurring a huge carbon footprint in the process. So I took enormous pleasure to find a big foot mansion unmasked as the perpetrator of the central event of a novel which remains compelling read until the very last page.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews