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The Local News
A deeply moving story of the complicated bond between brother and sister
“Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.”
Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her. As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother’s shadow. While Danny’s athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school, Lydia’s smarts relegated her to the sidelines, where she rolled her eyes at her brother and his meathead friends and suffered his casual cruelty with resigned bewilderment. Though a part of her secretly wished for a return of the easy friendship she and Danny shared as children, another part of her wished Danny would just vanish. And then, one night, he did.
In the year following Danny Pasternak’s disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her ambivalent—often grudging—grief for a brother she did not particularly like. Suddenly embraced by Danny’s old crowd, forgotten by her parents, and drawn into the missing person investigation by her family’s intriguing private eye, Lydia both blossoms and struggles to find herself during Danny’s absence. But when a trail of clues leads to a shocking outcome in her brother’s case, the teenaged Lydia and the adult she will become are irrevocably changed, even now as she reluctantly prepares to return to her hometown.
Relentlessly gripping, often funny, and profoundly moving, The Local News is a powerful exploration of the fraught relationship between a brother and sister and how our siblings define who we are.
“Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.”
Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her. As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother’s shadow. While Danny’s athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school, Lydia’s smarts relegated her to the sidelines, where she rolled her eyes at her brother and his meathead friends and suffered his casual cruelty with resigned bewilderment. Though a part of her secretly wished for a return of the easy friendship she and Danny shared as children, another part of her wished Danny would just vanish. And then, one night, he did.
In the year following Danny Pasternak’s disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her ambivalent—often grudging—grief for a brother she did not particularly like. Suddenly embraced by Danny’s old crowd, forgotten by her parents, and drawn into the missing person investigation by her family’s intriguing private eye, Lydia both blossoms and struggles to find herself during Danny’s absence. But when a trail of clues leads to a shocking outcome in her brother’s case, the teenaged Lydia and the adult she will become are irrevocably changed, even now as she reluctantly prepares to return to her hometown.
Relentlessly gripping, often funny, and profoundly moving, The Local News is a powerful exploration of the fraught relationship between a brother and sister and how our siblings define who we are.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published February 18, 2009
17 people are currently reading
569 people want to read
About the author
Miriam Gershow
5 books48 followersMiriam Gershow is the author of Closer (Regal House), Survival Tips: Stories (Propeller Books), and The Local News (Spiegel & Grau). Miriam’s stories appear in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. Her flash fiction appears in anthologies from Alan Squire Books, Alternating Currents, and Fractured Lit, as well as many journals, including Pithead Chapel, Had, and Variant Lit. Her creative nonfiction is featured in Salon and Craft Literary among other journals.
Miriam’s writing has been called “unusually credible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New York Times. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Pencraft Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Awards’ Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and has been awarded writing residencies at Playa, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres.
She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and has since taught fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin as well as descriptive writing to gifted high school students through Johns Hopkins University. She has taught writing to first-graders, retirees, and everyone in between. She is the organizer of 100 Notable Small Press Books, a curated list of the year’s recommended titles across genres from independent publishers. Miriam lives with her family in Eugene OR, where she teaches writing at the University of Oregon.
(Photo Credit: Livia Fremouw)
Miriam’s writing has been called “unusually credible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New York Times. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Pencraft Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Awards’ Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and has been awarded writing residencies at Playa, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres.
She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and has since taught fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin as well as descriptive writing to gifted high school students through Johns Hopkins University. She has taught writing to first-graders, retirees, and everyone in between. She is the organizer of 100 Notable Small Press Books, a curated list of the year’s recommended titles across genres from independent publishers. Miriam lives with her family in Eugene OR, where she teaches writing at the University of Oregon.
(Photo Credit: Livia Fremouw)
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November 17, 2009
WRITING WRONG
Lydia Pasternak is in therapy. She’s fifteen and her football hero, popular, older brother has gone missing. He just suddenly, mysteriously vanished. Lydia has twenty-eight therapy sessions and nothing happens. Nothing! Twenty-eight sessions. Why did the author, Miriah Gershow, bother to include “therapy” in her novel, “The Local News” (2009) at all? Because Gershow thought a 15 year old girl would probably need therapy after such an event? Something must have happened, for better or worse in twenty-eight sessions. At least some insight into why nothing happened, yes?
Lydia’s parents both go missing, too—psychologically and emotionally. Lydia is left to fend for herself (Except she is in therapy.) And nothing happens. She does not become violet. She does not become sexually promiscuous. She does not abuse drugs or alcohol, drop out of school or become suicidal. She does become infatuated with the private detective hired to find her brother … and nothing happens. She does develop an eye infection … and nothing happens. She does, at one point, attach herself to the foreign-exchange student … and nothing happens. That is pretty much the whole of the story—nothing happens. We, as reader learn nothing. Oh, we do learn what happened to the brother … but not really.
There is never any “why” here. Not even a clue as to why the author put events into the story. A whim? Filler? Why tell the story at all? You can, however, open the book to any page, read it, and think—good writing. Gershow can put words on paper that paint a good picture, mainly of a nerdy teen-age girl. But there is no story here. No character development, no issue explored, no question asked and answered.
Seeking answers, I googled Miriam Gershow. It so happens she is a creative writing professor at the University of Oregon, and this is her first novel. Her picture suggests she was a nerdy high schooler; but this is not auto-biographical, she discloses in an interview. She made the story up. (Aside to the professor: Write what you know, or at least do some research.) Again, Gershow does do good work when it comes showing what it is like to be an intellectual, nerdy teen-aged girl. But that’s it. And she is teaching creative writing at a major university! Not English composition, creative writing!
One of the hits on Google was a student evaluation questionnaire. A not uncommon comment was “Worst teacher ever,” or something similar. A common comment was that if you showed up for class and handed in assignments, you got a C grade. This at university, which is supposed to be where the unaverage come to learn. What the f__k is going on?
I looked at the first six pages of Google on Gershow, sixty sites, and most were book reviews … and the reviews were very favorable, flattering in fact. Rave reviews. Something is wrong here. This is not good writing—writing that goes nowhere. I cannot recommend this book, especially to those wanting to learn about writing, which is the least a good book should do. Excuse me … my next appointment is here. “Come in, please. Sit down, I’ll be with you in a sec … .” [Next: Writing Creatively.]
Lydia Pasternak is in therapy. She’s fifteen and her football hero, popular, older brother has gone missing. He just suddenly, mysteriously vanished. Lydia has twenty-eight therapy sessions and nothing happens. Nothing! Twenty-eight sessions. Why did the author, Miriah Gershow, bother to include “therapy” in her novel, “The Local News” (2009) at all? Because Gershow thought a 15 year old girl would probably need therapy after such an event? Something must have happened, for better or worse in twenty-eight sessions. At least some insight into why nothing happened, yes?
Lydia’s parents both go missing, too—psychologically and emotionally. Lydia is left to fend for herself (Except she is in therapy.) And nothing happens. She does not become violet. She does not become sexually promiscuous. She does not abuse drugs or alcohol, drop out of school or become suicidal. She does become infatuated with the private detective hired to find her brother … and nothing happens. She does develop an eye infection … and nothing happens. She does, at one point, attach herself to the foreign-exchange student … and nothing happens. That is pretty much the whole of the story—nothing happens. We, as reader learn nothing. Oh, we do learn what happened to the brother … but not really.
There is never any “why” here. Not even a clue as to why the author put events into the story. A whim? Filler? Why tell the story at all? You can, however, open the book to any page, read it, and think—good writing. Gershow can put words on paper that paint a good picture, mainly of a nerdy teen-age girl. But there is no story here. No character development, no issue explored, no question asked and answered.
Seeking answers, I googled Miriam Gershow. It so happens she is a creative writing professor at the University of Oregon, and this is her first novel. Her picture suggests she was a nerdy high schooler; but this is not auto-biographical, she discloses in an interview. She made the story up. (Aside to the professor: Write what you know, or at least do some research.) Again, Gershow does do good work when it comes showing what it is like to be an intellectual, nerdy teen-aged girl. But that’s it. And she is teaching creative writing at a major university! Not English composition, creative writing!
One of the hits on Google was a student evaluation questionnaire. A not uncommon comment was “Worst teacher ever,” or something similar. A common comment was that if you showed up for class and handed in assignments, you got a C grade. This at university, which is supposed to be where the unaverage come to learn. What the f__k is going on?
I looked at the first six pages of Google on Gershow, sixty sites, and most were book reviews … and the reviews were very favorable, flattering in fact. Rave reviews. Something is wrong here. This is not good writing—writing that goes nowhere. I cannot recommend this book, especially to those wanting to learn about writing, which is the least a good book should do. Excuse me … my next appointment is here. “Come in, please. Sit down, I’ll be with you in a sec … .” [Next: Writing Creatively.]
March 10, 2009
This is one of those books (think: The Lovely Bones) where a person is glad to have read it, but it feels weird to say "I enjoyed it," because the subject matter is dismal. That said, I think the story was compelling and the writing beautifully captured the voice and (equally important) the mindset of a teenage girl protagonist. She is dealing with the disappearance of an older brother, but here's the twist: She sorta couldn't stand him anyway, and, as unseemly as it is to admit it, her social standing in the high school has improved due to the drama of her (popular) brother going missing. And yet, she is not a heartless, nasty person. Her brother was kind of a jerk. She, meanwhile is super-smart, able to communicate well, yet remedial in her ability to connect with others.
October 9, 2009
I'm going to begin by applauding what Gershow does right, earning her three stars and at times even an enthusiastic four (had she only kept it up) before I bemaon where this book goes wrong.
The story is basic enough - a young tenth grader's big brother goes missing, and how the family is affected. Not super interesting per se. But what Gershow does which is super up my alley is suddenly pose the question - let's say you didn't like this brother very much?
I think the layers to complicated and often contradictory feelings toward the people close to us are fascinating, and all the more so if they were stunted at the awkward moments such as a twelfth grade older brother. Danny picked on Lydia constantly, humiliated her, and was your classic jock bully who got by on his muscle since he wasn't particularly bright or motivated.
Lydia on the other hand is super smart (at times it felt more like this was the author's way to make sure her adult sounding teen was authentic - just make her a genius and its all good) and sees through the facade, the making of Danny the Hero simply because he's gone. So, that intriguing premise coupled with very good writing made for a good potential read.
Unfortunately, both of those pieces fell apart. First, the premise itself was in the end, unexplored. Did Lydia feel GUILT for this seeming apathy toward her brother? No mention. In addition, her smarty pants attitude got super annoying, and after a while it seemed to be the only thing she had going for her, which, in truth, isn't much.
The other characters weren't too likeable either - fell apart mom, vapid dad, and annoying sidekick mimicked after Ducky in Pretty in Pink, except a lot less charming.
The story seems to be about a thousand different things and yet nothing - Lydia breaks into Danny;s clique now that she has this tragedy happen to her, but this track goes nowhere. It just happens. At some point she bursts a blood vessel in her eye. I still don't know where that fits in. And many other side details that seemed to be nothing more than a way to take up space.
The story dragged for a while and before I know it I just wanted to know what happened to Danny and move on with my life. We do eventualy happen and that's about it for the story. Lydia has some bizare crush on the creepy detective working on the case, which doesn't do muchf or the story either, nor do the other creeps she has weird encounters with along the way.
It seemed this story didn't know what it wanted to be, when in truth, had it stuck with its starting premise I think the story could have been a lot more focused and engaging. As it was I didn't even read the last handful of pages; at that point I had already moved on.
The story is basic enough - a young tenth grader's big brother goes missing, and how the family is affected. Not super interesting per se. But what Gershow does which is super up my alley is suddenly pose the question - let's say you didn't like this brother very much?
I think the layers to complicated and often contradictory feelings toward the people close to us are fascinating, and all the more so if they were stunted at the awkward moments such as a twelfth grade older brother. Danny picked on Lydia constantly, humiliated her, and was your classic jock bully who got by on his muscle since he wasn't particularly bright or motivated.
Lydia on the other hand is super smart (at times it felt more like this was the author's way to make sure her adult sounding teen was authentic - just make her a genius and its all good) and sees through the facade, the making of Danny the Hero simply because he's gone. So, that intriguing premise coupled with very good writing made for a good potential read.
Unfortunately, both of those pieces fell apart. First, the premise itself was in the end, unexplored. Did Lydia feel GUILT for this seeming apathy toward her brother? No mention. In addition, her smarty pants attitude got super annoying, and after a while it seemed to be the only thing she had going for her, which, in truth, isn't much.
The other characters weren't too likeable either - fell apart mom, vapid dad, and annoying sidekick mimicked after Ducky in Pretty in Pink, except a lot less charming.
The story seems to be about a thousand different things and yet nothing - Lydia breaks into Danny;s clique now that she has this tragedy happen to her, but this track goes nowhere. It just happens. At some point she bursts a blood vessel in her eye. I still don't know where that fits in. And many other side details that seemed to be nothing more than a way to take up space.
The story dragged for a while and before I know it I just wanted to know what happened to Danny and move on with my life. We do eventualy happen and that's about it for the story. Lydia has some bizare crush on the creepy detective working on the case, which doesn't do muchf or the story either, nor do the other creeps she has weird encounters with along the way.
It seemed this story didn't know what it wanted to be, when in truth, had it stuck with its starting premise I think the story could have been a lot more focused and engaging. As it was I didn't even read the last handful of pages; at that point I had already moved on.
October 28, 2009
The Local News by Miriam Gershow tells the story of a forgotten child. After her brother disappears, sixteen-year-old Lydia Pasternak might as well be alone. Her devastated parents do not function, except as needed to search for their missing son.
Lydia, suddenly a macabre celebrity at her local school, is a character who twisted my guts. This girl is written without an ounce of sentimental overlay—I might as well have been inside her mind. Her transfixing voice is apparent from the first lines:
After my brother went missing, my parents let me use their car whenever I wanted, even though I only had a learner’s permit. They didn’t enforce my curfew. I didn’t have to ask to be excused from the dinner table. The dinner table, in fact, had all but disappeared, covered with posters of Danny, a box of the yellow ribbons that our whole neighborhood had tied around the trees and mailboxes and car antennas, and piles of the letters we’d gotten from people praying for Danny’s safe return or who thought they saw him hitchhiking along a highway a couple of states away. I didn’t have to do any more chores.
Gershow’s book should be a bestseller. All of you reading this. Go out. Right now. Buy it. Read it. If you like, write and thank me.
Lydia, suddenly a macabre celebrity at her local school, is a character who twisted my guts. This girl is written without an ounce of sentimental overlay—I might as well have been inside her mind. Her transfixing voice is apparent from the first lines:
After my brother went missing, my parents let me use their car whenever I wanted, even though I only had a learner’s permit. They didn’t enforce my curfew. I didn’t have to ask to be excused from the dinner table. The dinner table, in fact, had all but disappeared, covered with posters of Danny, a box of the yellow ribbons that our whole neighborhood had tied around the trees and mailboxes and car antennas, and piles of the letters we’d gotten from people praying for Danny’s safe return or who thought they saw him hitchhiking along a highway a couple of states away. I didn’t have to do any more chores.
Gershow’s book should be a bestseller. All of you reading this. Go out. Right now. Buy it. Read it. If you like, write and thank me.
October 18, 2009
Tremendous. A throughly absorbing read although not particularly suspenseful. The teenage narrator so resonated with me I felt I could have easily continued her story (though I'm very sorry Gershow did not as I was reluctant to leave Lydia's world.)The subject matter is dark, disappearance of popular All-American high school boy yet Lydia's wry delivery and navigation through the halls of her local high school are the star of the show. Admittedly a bit daunted (and, yes, envious) by her obvious intelligence I nonetheless identified with her peripheral sense of self in the world.
May 12, 2009
This was a well-written book, but what a grim subject! I'd rate it a 3.5 overall. A high school football player goes missing and each member of his devastated family--parents and sister--deal with it in their own way. The father withdraws, the mother becomes obsessed with the case and missing children in general, the teenage sister, whose relationship with the missing boy was difficult, tries to find solace but no one knows how to help her.
It didn't help that I have a friend whose son has the same name as the missing boy with roughly the same personality. I could see Danny all too well.
Some parts of the plot were just bizarre--Lydia hanging out with the French exchange student and his host family, searching for the homeless woman who sent her family notes....it seems like someone would have stepped up to the plate and helped this poor girl out.
All in all, a well crafted and very realistic story--just not a very cheery read.
It didn't help that I have a friend whose son has the same name as the missing boy with roughly the same personality. I could see Danny all too well.
Some parts of the plot were just bizarre--Lydia hanging out with the French exchange student and his host family, searching for the homeless woman who sent her family notes....it seems like someone would have stepped up to the plate and helped this poor girl out.
All in all, a well crafted and very realistic story--just not a very cheery read.
June 4, 2012
This is quite a story. It is written from a young girl’s perspective, Lydia, surrounding the disappearance of her brother, Danny, and how it affects her life. Figuring her life wasn’t that great to begin with, complete with disengaged parents, the disappearance is the final blow to the unstable family unit. The golden child is missing and all is left but Lydia; a daughter who really wasn’t the main focus of the family in the first place. I am amazed how much Lydia’s character touched me and how I related to her on the oddest level. I was never “Lydia” in high school but her perspective on the foolishnesses of our teen lives was exactly how I felt growing up. We all have a little bit of Lydia’s angst and confusion concerning our teen lives. The characters are realistic and I felt like I was back in high school with the people I both liked, disliked, achieved to be and in the end grew up to leave behind as Lydia did.
June 20, 2009
I couldn't put this book down for a number of reasons, but the main one was the narrating character herself. Magnetic, intelligent, and far above the drama (created by others or not) in which she constantly found herself. This was the author's first novel; I can't wait to see what her next work is like.
June 24, 2009
This was a fun (if somewhat depressing) break from more serious reading. The main character is very believable. I do have to dock it a full star for the use of the phrase "lite reading." Aargh!! The world is coming to an end.
March 8, 2010
Although the story line was a bit disturbing, the portrait of a high school girl going through a really rough time was really well rendered.
October 8, 2014
WARNING, THERE ARE SPOILERS, ESPECIALLY IN THE Q&A!
The Local News is one of the those books that grabbed me and pulled me in because of its protagonist and narrator. To me it was really a story about grief, and the different ways in which people deal with losing someone. The book is aptly named as the story deals so closely with the rallying of a small community around tragedy. However, this is where the rather cliche grieving story comes to an abrupt halt.
I don’t own a T.V. and make a conscious decision to get my news from the internet–alternative sources. I remember when I was a kid, my mom and dad watching the news and it was always about a kid going missing, a murder, a missing person, a car crash that took the lives of some high school kids just weeks before graduation (that happens all too often in the town I grew up in). In the aftermath people always say the nice thing. How great of a person these people were, how kind, how noble, how they were universally liked–which in the end, isn’t actually true, because nobody is universally liked. This is the deeper issue touched on in The Local News.
Characters:
As a writer myself, it always amazes me when I can talk about a character in a book as if they were more than just words. This character has feelings and ideas to me, she is a person I could speak to, or speak about, debating her decisions. For me, this is what I want from a character, and Lydia Pasternak is that.
Lydia is the other side of the picture. When her brother, star football player at the high school, super popular, jock, hearth throb, disappears, she is the only one to not be sorry about this. “Going missing, I wanted to yell from some deep, dark pit in the middle of me, was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.” This is the crux of the story. Lydia sees her brother, Danny, as the most cliche, boring, and harmful person she has ever had the misfortune of knowing.
As Lydia is the narrator of the story (perfect narrator, I should say) the rest of the characters can feel stereotyped, but in context with Lydia’s constant judgments of people, it makes sense. Her parents are only concerned with her brother’s whereabouts. They are frantic and jittery and nearly incapable of doing anything other than worrying about their son. It is as though Lydia doesn’t even exist.
Plot as a segway into more characters:
In the wake of her brother’s disappearance, Lydia has found herself in a powerful position in terms of the high school hierarchy. Her brother’s friends all feel like she needs taking care of. They give her things like food and treat her as though she can fill her brother’s shoes. But when a private detective is hired by Lydia’s parents her social life takes a back seat as she becomes part of the investigation to find her brother. (Yes, you do find where he’s gone, in the end).
The Crux:
I loved this book because it tells a story not usually told. Lydia has such a keen eye for what draws people together. She is likable in the way she is broken, she is broken in the way she is treated. She understands the reason for peoples actions, at times, better than they understand themselves, and to top it off, the one person she can’t understand at all is herself (and actually, maybe Danny, but that’s for you to decide on your own).
My favorite line of the book that, I think, shows Lydia’s perceptiveness, “And I thought too of how the whole spectacle must have delighted the crowd–such a pitch-perfect closing act to assembly, such fuel for their insatiable, morbid glee.”
If you are going to order this book, please order it from a local bookstore, or at the very least from Powell’s, but I’d like to encourage all of you to buy local! Bookstores need our help.
Alright, now I want to warn you, this Q&A has many SPOILERS so if you haven’t read the book, maybe it would be best to leave this part until you have! You have been warned.
Alex Clark-McGlenn: I was most impressed with the characterization, voice, and temperament of Lydia Pasternak. How and when did she come about?
Miriam Gershow: My very earliest ideas about the book were framed around the notion of a missing person story, though without the typical grieving survivor left behind. I wanted the narrator to be a family member who felt ambivalence about the missing person. “Going missing was the most interesting thing my brother had ever done” was one of the very first lines I scribbled down before starting to write the book in earnest. So Lydia’s sensibility was there from the very start. However her voice really didn’t emerge until I started to write my first scene, which comes early in the book, when she’s talking to a gas station attendant who won’t let her hang a poster for her missing brother. In the process of writing that scene, Lydia’s precociousness, her intelligence and her constant internal patter emerged. This was all a surprise to me, and a very pleasant one at that.
ACM: I know all characters are part of the authors who write them, but how do you relate to Lydia and who is she to you?
MG: First off, Lydia is far smarter than I am. She knows stuff – lots of facts, lots of current events. But I certainly relate to her sense of estrangement, particularly in high school. I immediately distrust anyone who experienced high school as anything but profoundly estranging. Who is Lydia to me? I love Lydia. I loved every day I spent with her in writing this book. But it’s been five years since the book was published, so she’s like a cherished child who’s been away to college for a while now. She’s still dear to me, but I’m busy with the kids still at home.
ACM: Lydia is the perfect person to tell this story. Did you know this when you began to write The Local News or did you play with other narrators?
MG: I knew before I ever sat down to write. And I’m not someone who knows much about a story before I sit down to write. But like I said, I wasn’t interested in the typically grieving narrator. So I was driven by Lydia’s point of view. I wanted to know what the secret underbelly was of a missing person story. I wondered, what if someone was, in part, relieved to be rid of a family member. I never considered anyone else to tell that story.
ACM: What might the differences have been if Lydia’s mother or father had told this story?
MG: It would have been an entirely different book. There was no ambivalence about Danny’s disappearance from the point of view of the parents. There was no relief. Many writers have told that story very well, including Stuart O’Nan, Jacqueline Michard and Alice Sebold in the recent past.
ACM: The term “world building” is something usually reserved for Fantasy and Science Fiction writing. It seems to me that you did a lot of world building, incorporating Lydia’s worldview seamlessly into the plot. How might world building and character development compliment each other?
MG: I see them as entirely intertwined. Since I traffic in the here and now – or the here and then of the 1990s – I don’t have to consciously scaffold a world different from our own. But every character sees the world in a unique way. I don’t know any other way to build a character’s world than to simply immerse myself in her point of view in every scene. What does she pay attention to? What does she care about? What does she fixate on? What worries her? From there comes the world. I’m a big believer in specific detail. Whether you’re writing about an imagined solar system or about suburban Detroit, the details are what are going to sell the world to the reader.
ACM: You tackle the way different people deal with grief head on in this book. What made you want to explore these issues?
MG: I’m not sure I know the answer to that. Sometimes an idea just grabs you. I wasn’t interested in grief as much as the complications of grief, or in grief as the backdrop of a coming of age story.
ACM: How much research went into exploring the psychological ways people deal with grief?
MG: None. Research went into figuring out the current events of the times and about learning the names of straits, all of Lydia’s book knowledge. But the rest was that same immersive process, imagining what the sister of a missing person or the parent or the classmates or the ex-girlfriend would do in any given situation, how they would react, what they would feel. That’s the joy of fiction writing for me — playing make believe!
ACM: I was really hoping Danny had left and would come back. My hope was that he had some deep reason for not wanting to deal with popularity, his parents and sister, all the expectations people put on him. When I found out he had been abducted and murdered I felt empty. Was this your plan all along? To leave your readers (at that point of the book) with a hopeless emptiness? At what point in writing The Local News did you know Danny’s fate?
MG: I knew his fate very early on. I didn’t mean for you to feel hopeless! I suppose that’s a compliment, since it means you were invested. But it’s also kind of sad. I think because I knew from nearly the beginning what would happen to him, I never had the same reaction to it as readers, even though I loved Danny just like I love all my characters. I more was interested in how Lydia would be changed by it and survive it. Had he simply returned from some big lunkhead adventure, I don’t think Lydia would have been compelled to tell the story twelve years later. It would have simply faded in her memory as one more dumb thing her dumb brother had done in their childhood.
ACM:The Local News was a book I never wanted to put down. What can readers look forward to from you in the future?
MG: I find it bad luck to talk about my work. But I will say, I am beginning to find my way through a very unexpected non-fiction project. It’s too early to say exactly what it will be in the end, but it involves my earlier childhood neighborhood in Detroit.
The Local News is one of the those books that grabbed me and pulled me in because of its protagonist and narrator. To me it was really a story about grief, and the different ways in which people deal with losing someone. The book is aptly named as the story deals so closely with the rallying of a small community around tragedy. However, this is where the rather cliche grieving story comes to an abrupt halt.
I don’t own a T.V. and make a conscious decision to get my news from the internet–alternative sources. I remember when I was a kid, my mom and dad watching the news and it was always about a kid going missing, a murder, a missing person, a car crash that took the lives of some high school kids just weeks before graduation (that happens all too often in the town I grew up in). In the aftermath people always say the nice thing. How great of a person these people were, how kind, how noble, how they were universally liked–which in the end, isn’t actually true, because nobody is universally liked. This is the deeper issue touched on in The Local News.
Characters:
As a writer myself, it always amazes me when I can talk about a character in a book as if they were more than just words. This character has feelings and ideas to me, she is a person I could speak to, or speak about, debating her decisions. For me, this is what I want from a character, and Lydia Pasternak is that.
Lydia is the other side of the picture. When her brother, star football player at the high school, super popular, jock, hearth throb, disappears, she is the only one to not be sorry about this. “Going missing, I wanted to yell from some deep, dark pit in the middle of me, was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.” This is the crux of the story. Lydia sees her brother, Danny, as the most cliche, boring, and harmful person she has ever had the misfortune of knowing.
As Lydia is the narrator of the story (perfect narrator, I should say) the rest of the characters can feel stereotyped, but in context with Lydia’s constant judgments of people, it makes sense. Her parents are only concerned with her brother’s whereabouts. They are frantic and jittery and nearly incapable of doing anything other than worrying about their son. It is as though Lydia doesn’t even exist.
Plot as a segway into more characters:
In the wake of her brother’s disappearance, Lydia has found herself in a powerful position in terms of the high school hierarchy. Her brother’s friends all feel like she needs taking care of. They give her things like food and treat her as though she can fill her brother’s shoes. But when a private detective is hired by Lydia’s parents her social life takes a back seat as she becomes part of the investigation to find her brother. (Yes, you do find where he’s gone, in the end).
The Crux:
I loved this book because it tells a story not usually told. Lydia has such a keen eye for what draws people together. She is likable in the way she is broken, she is broken in the way she is treated. She understands the reason for peoples actions, at times, better than they understand themselves, and to top it off, the one person she can’t understand at all is herself (and actually, maybe Danny, but that’s for you to decide on your own).
My favorite line of the book that, I think, shows Lydia’s perceptiveness, “And I thought too of how the whole spectacle must have delighted the crowd–such a pitch-perfect closing act to assembly, such fuel for their insatiable, morbid glee.”
If you are going to order this book, please order it from a local bookstore, or at the very least from Powell’s, but I’d like to encourage all of you to buy local! Bookstores need our help.
Alright, now I want to warn you, this Q&A has many SPOILERS so if you haven’t read the book, maybe it would be best to leave this part until you have! You have been warned.
Alex Clark-McGlenn: I was most impressed with the characterization, voice, and temperament of Lydia Pasternak. How and when did she come about?
Miriam Gershow: My very earliest ideas about the book were framed around the notion of a missing person story, though without the typical grieving survivor left behind. I wanted the narrator to be a family member who felt ambivalence about the missing person. “Going missing was the most interesting thing my brother had ever done” was one of the very first lines I scribbled down before starting to write the book in earnest. So Lydia’s sensibility was there from the very start. However her voice really didn’t emerge until I started to write my first scene, which comes early in the book, when she’s talking to a gas station attendant who won’t let her hang a poster for her missing brother. In the process of writing that scene, Lydia’s precociousness, her intelligence and her constant internal patter emerged. This was all a surprise to me, and a very pleasant one at that.
ACM: I know all characters are part of the authors who write them, but how do you relate to Lydia and who is she to you?
MG: First off, Lydia is far smarter than I am. She knows stuff – lots of facts, lots of current events. But I certainly relate to her sense of estrangement, particularly in high school. I immediately distrust anyone who experienced high school as anything but profoundly estranging. Who is Lydia to me? I love Lydia. I loved every day I spent with her in writing this book. But it’s been five years since the book was published, so she’s like a cherished child who’s been away to college for a while now. She’s still dear to me, but I’m busy with the kids still at home.
ACM: Lydia is the perfect person to tell this story. Did you know this when you began to write The Local News or did you play with other narrators?
MG: I knew before I ever sat down to write. And I’m not someone who knows much about a story before I sit down to write. But like I said, I wasn’t interested in the typically grieving narrator. So I was driven by Lydia’s point of view. I wanted to know what the secret underbelly was of a missing person story. I wondered, what if someone was, in part, relieved to be rid of a family member. I never considered anyone else to tell that story.
ACM: What might the differences have been if Lydia’s mother or father had told this story?
MG: It would have been an entirely different book. There was no ambivalence about Danny’s disappearance from the point of view of the parents. There was no relief. Many writers have told that story very well, including Stuart O’Nan, Jacqueline Michard and Alice Sebold in the recent past.
ACM: The term “world building” is something usually reserved for Fantasy and Science Fiction writing. It seems to me that you did a lot of world building, incorporating Lydia’s worldview seamlessly into the plot. How might world building and character development compliment each other?
MG: I see them as entirely intertwined. Since I traffic in the here and now – or the here and then of the 1990s – I don’t have to consciously scaffold a world different from our own. But every character sees the world in a unique way. I don’t know any other way to build a character’s world than to simply immerse myself in her point of view in every scene. What does she pay attention to? What does she care about? What does she fixate on? What worries her? From there comes the world. I’m a big believer in specific detail. Whether you’re writing about an imagined solar system or about suburban Detroit, the details are what are going to sell the world to the reader.
ACM: You tackle the way different people deal with grief head on in this book. What made you want to explore these issues?
MG: I’m not sure I know the answer to that. Sometimes an idea just grabs you. I wasn’t interested in grief as much as the complications of grief, or in grief as the backdrop of a coming of age story.
ACM: How much research went into exploring the psychological ways people deal with grief?
MG: None. Research went into figuring out the current events of the times and about learning the names of straits, all of Lydia’s book knowledge. But the rest was that same immersive process, imagining what the sister of a missing person or the parent or the classmates or the ex-girlfriend would do in any given situation, how they would react, what they would feel. That’s the joy of fiction writing for me — playing make believe!
ACM: I was really hoping Danny had left and would come back. My hope was that he had some deep reason for not wanting to deal with popularity, his parents and sister, all the expectations people put on him. When I found out he had been abducted and murdered I felt empty. Was this your plan all along? To leave your readers (at that point of the book) with a hopeless emptiness? At what point in writing The Local News did you know Danny’s fate?
MG: I knew his fate very early on. I didn’t mean for you to feel hopeless! I suppose that’s a compliment, since it means you were invested. But it’s also kind of sad. I think because I knew from nearly the beginning what would happen to him, I never had the same reaction to it as readers, even though I loved Danny just like I love all my characters. I more was interested in how Lydia would be changed by it and survive it. Had he simply returned from some big lunkhead adventure, I don’t think Lydia would have been compelled to tell the story twelve years later. It would have simply faded in her memory as one more dumb thing her dumb brother had done in their childhood.
ACM:The Local News was a book I never wanted to put down. What can readers look forward to from you in the future?
MG: I find it bad luck to talk about my work. But I will say, I am beginning to find my way through a very unexpected non-fiction project. It’s too early to say exactly what it will be in the end, but it involves my earlier childhood neighborhood in Detroit.
August 10, 2018
If you're looking for a feel good story you wouldn't have picked this up in the first place: the plot is centered around a fifteen year old girl whose highschool jock brother goes missing. So it's obviously not a lite novel, but even so, it got so incredibly bleak and grim that it became hard to keep reading. I found the writing style to be lovely overall, but it felt like I was reading forever and not making any headway. I think that was due to there being hardly any dialogue, so the paragraphs are long and somewhat tedious. Before you get to the end strangely enough, the mystery is solved, so I wasn't very compelled to finish the book. I did, though I skimmed the last couple of chapters because by then I was really and honestly sick of Lydia. You make excuses for her throughout the book, but frankly, she's super unlikable and borders on the psychopathic, with her disdain for everyone around her and her lack of empathy for anyone but herself. She never seems to grow out of this or learn anything, so it fell short for me. Had the last half been full of growth, edited better, and saved the mystery for the end, I would have recommended it. As it is, I'm happy it's over and back to the library it goes.
June 18, 2023
I reserve five stars for standout literary works usually but although this is not 'literary' in the sense of groundbreaking in style and form, it is a profoundly intelligent and outstandingly well-written novel.
Following the dark and tortured paths that three family members each take, one is reminded that in real life trauma often does divide people, divide families. People are not always able to pull together and be strong, despite what Hollywood might have us think. At no point in this fairly long and incredibly detailed tale of familial disintegration did I sense a false note, a fake step, an inconsistency. All along I was thinking yes, this is how it would play out. Yes, this is how they would feel. This is what would happen. From the fatuous therapist to the well-meaning friend, each character was convincingly and compellingly delineated.
There were some truly profound insights voiced about the nature of loss, of trauma, of uncertainty and dread and how these affect people. It is hard to believe the writer was not drawing from personal experience, so spot on and accurate her observations. Yet I understand it is purely a work of fiction. Hard to believe it's her first novel, as well. A brilliantly clever, mature, harrowing book.
Following the dark and tortured paths that three family members each take, one is reminded that in real life trauma often does divide people, divide families. People are not always able to pull together and be strong, despite what Hollywood might have us think. At no point in this fairly long and incredibly detailed tale of familial disintegration did I sense a false note, a fake step, an inconsistency. All along I was thinking yes, this is how it would play out. Yes, this is how they would feel. This is what would happen. From the fatuous therapist to the well-meaning friend, each character was convincingly and compellingly delineated.
There were some truly profound insights voiced about the nature of loss, of trauma, of uncertainty and dread and how these affect people. It is hard to believe the writer was not drawing from personal experience, so spot on and accurate her observations. Yet I understand it is purely a work of fiction. Hard to believe it's her first novel, as well. A brilliantly clever, mature, harrowing book.
May 12, 2017
A gripping tale. The mystery of a popular brother's sudden disappearance leaves a huge hole in Lydia's family and sends Lydia on a quest to find her brother. The painful unfolding of this family's tragedy is embodied in teenage Lydia as she struggles to make sense of the loss. She goes through the motions, enduring her own emotional quagmire and the collective grieving of a community, finding herself defined, not as who she is, but by the disappearance of her brother. Overlooked by her parents as they struggle with their own grief, Lydia must find her own path, playing out the catastrophe and heartache in a way that is insightful and achingly real, eventually coming to grips with possibilities beyond a tragedy that changed everything. Loved, loved this book. Gershow is a great writer and masterful storyteller.
March 9, 2020
I really wanted to like this book, because I know the author (we live in the same town, hi Miriam!) -- Unfortunately it wasn't my cup of tea, mostly due to the depressing subject matter, but I thought it was really well written. It was pretty depressing, but very realistic about how a teen would handle the situation of her bully of a brother disappearing and the dynamic behind a family that falls apart due to that sad event. Would I read it again, likely not, but again, it was well-written, just not my personal cup of tea, and the character of Lydia was very well developed. I just didn't like her very much, personally, because of how much she focused on the negative side of things. The beginning was very easy to read and get into, and it was overall very easy to read, and I was impressed with the cohesiveness of the plot and overarching character dynamics.
July 10, 2019
I really enjoyed this novel, especially since it takes place where I happen to live, so all the references to place were familiar. The main character is a young girl whose not-particularly beloved older brother goes missing.
Suddenly everything from the family dynamic to her identity at school (the missing boy's sister, rather than simply herself) changes and she has to navigate it all without much help or notice from her parents and too much help and notice from her classmates.
The book jacket compares this novel as being in the same family --or some such doubletalk-- as The Lucky Bones, and it is. I recommend it.
Suddenly everything from the family dynamic to her identity at school (the missing boy's sister, rather than simply herself) changes and she has to navigate it all without much help or notice from her parents and too much help and notice from her classmates.
The book jacket compares this novel as being in the same family --or some such doubletalk-- as The Lucky Bones, and it is. I recommend it.
March 25, 2018
I really didn't think I would enjoy this book all that much, but it was pretty compelling. I like mysteries and I was so anxious to see what happened next and if it was resolved. It was a bit slow in places but I enjoyed it.
March 29, 2020
Losing a brother never goes away
I was mystified by Lydia's reactions to her parents, best friend other friends, her psychiatrist, the sincere investigator , virtually everyone. Held my attention throughout.
I was mystified by Lydia's reactions to her parents, best friend other friends, her psychiatrist, the sincere investigator , virtually everyone. Held my attention throughout.
July 11, 2024
I thought this was going to get more involved in the disappearance of her brother but instead it was more of the effect this had on the main character. It was interesting to get the perspective of the people left behind and how this really takes over their lives. It was a decent book.
August 22, 2017
Intriguing twist on a familiar concept, difficult and distant characters (though often with reason), and really powerful prose.
January 8, 2018
I needed a better ending!
April 5, 2019
3.5 stars
August 6, 2019
Not my sort of book. I didn't finish it as it didn't grip me enough.
February 23, 2017
I thought this book was extremely boring and the main character was so insufferable I couldn't finish this! She was supposed to be this super smart teenage girl who simply was too intelligent for silly teen things. I hate how the author depicted her as someone who was so snooty and yet at times completely obtuse. She was incredibly rude to her only friend and even their friendship was annoying in itself with the two constantly trying to outsmart each other. She was also one of those "smart" people who felt understanding other people and communicating were things that are unnecessary. I hate the perpetuation of the stereotype that extremely smart people see no value in emotional or social intelligence. I also hate those type of people in real life as well.
I honestly feel this book was no good because it showed a outdated view of smart teens as insufferable geeks who secretly want to fit in the cool people. Nowadays, people see that nerds or geeks have their own friends, fun, and relationships without having to look down on all the "dumb" popular people. She talked so much shit about her missing brother and all his stupid friends but then ditches the only genuine friend she ever had to hang with them? Why? This just doesn't make sense and her missing, possibly dead brother was just a side note in her life story.
I honestly feel this book was no good because it showed a outdated view of smart teens as insufferable geeks who secretly want to fit in the cool people. Nowadays, people see that nerds or geeks have their own friends, fun, and relationships without having to look down on all the "dumb" popular people. She talked so much shit about her missing brother and all his stupid friends but then ditches the only genuine friend she ever had to hang with them? Why? This just doesn't make sense and her missing, possibly dead brother was just a side note in her life story.
August 29, 2011
What if your sibling went missing? What if you didn't care? Such is the plight of Lydia Pasternak, a fifteen year old girl whose older brother goes missing one late summer afternoon. She is left to wrestle with her feelings of ambiguity over his disappearance and new-found fame with peers who, in the past, had either ridiculed or ignored her. Lydia struggles to attach herself somewhere as her parents are consumed by the devastation of their son's disappearance. As time goes on and her brother is not found, she begins to grieve for the boy who was once her friend, not merely another high school tormentor. Ever present is the unspoken question: "What if he never comes home?"
Thank you to Ms. Gershow who provided a review copy of her book. I was drawn into this book from the first sentence. Written from the perspective of Lydia, it is an eye-witness account of what it's like to be a part of a family in the midst of their worst nightmare. I knew I was fully committed to Lydia and what was happening when she describes the two types of parents: The clingers and the drifters. Lydia's parents are drifters. Knowing that she has been forgotten by her parents made me want to be there for her and make sure she would somehow be okay. It's also easy to be transported back into the time of what it's like to be a fifteen year old girl. Life is hard enough at that time in life without the adding something as prolific as a missing sibling into the mix.
I found myself identifying with her parents, as well. As a mother, I can't imagine the horror of having one of your children disappear. Ms. Gershow paints a vivid picture of what that looks like, from the house that begins to fill with clutter, to the sleepless nights, the unkempt appearances, and returning to old habits. I could smell the desperation mixed with cigarette smoke in all the scenes with Lydia's mother. Lydia has become flotsam, adrift on the current of this new reality; I want to scream at her parents until they take notice of her and make it all okay.
From the most heart-wrenching of perspectives, Ms. Gershow exposes what life is like on the inside of such a tragedy. All of the false leads, the group searches, the unbalanced people who to flock to these stories; the flurry of activity at the beginning of the incident and the faded flyers sitting in the gutters as time goes on with no new developments. The vacant stares of parents who aren't listening, the condescending pats on the head by the private investigator, the overwhelming and sometimes suffocating support of peers who had once treated her like an outcast. Through the eyes of Lydia, still a child herself, we see the impact an event such as this has on a family. As the story closes with Lydia as an adult, we know who was lost for good.
Thank you to Ms. Gershow who provided a review copy of her book. I was drawn into this book from the first sentence. Written from the perspective of Lydia, it is an eye-witness account of what it's like to be a part of a family in the midst of their worst nightmare. I knew I was fully committed to Lydia and what was happening when she describes the two types of parents: The clingers and the drifters. Lydia's parents are drifters. Knowing that she has been forgotten by her parents made me want to be there for her and make sure she would somehow be okay. It's also easy to be transported back into the time of what it's like to be a fifteen year old girl. Life is hard enough at that time in life without the adding something as prolific as a missing sibling into the mix.
I found myself identifying with her parents, as well. As a mother, I can't imagine the horror of having one of your children disappear. Ms. Gershow paints a vivid picture of what that looks like, from the house that begins to fill with clutter, to the sleepless nights, the unkempt appearances, and returning to old habits. I could smell the desperation mixed with cigarette smoke in all the scenes with Lydia's mother. Lydia has become flotsam, adrift on the current of this new reality; I want to scream at her parents until they take notice of her and make it all okay.
From the most heart-wrenching of perspectives, Ms. Gershow exposes what life is like on the inside of such a tragedy. All of the false leads, the group searches, the unbalanced people who to flock to these stories; the flurry of activity at the beginning of the incident and the faded flyers sitting in the gutters as time goes on with no new developments. The vacant stares of parents who aren't listening, the condescending pats on the head by the private investigator, the overwhelming and sometimes suffocating support of peers who had once treated her like an outcast. Through the eyes of Lydia, still a child herself, we see the impact an event such as this has on a family. As the story closes with Lydia as an adult, we know who was lost for good.
March 31, 2012
Sibling relationships can change dramatically when kids reach their teens, and it's happened to Danny and Lydia Pasternak. Danny morphed into a popular jock, one of the kids who can't be bothered with brainiac outsiders like his younger sister Lydia. Actually, other than her friend David Nelson, a brainiac outsider himself, most of the kids at Franklin High School can't be bothered with Lydia, and she's accepted that. But when Danny goes missing, suddenly everyone in town wants to be involved with the Pasternaks somehow, and Lydia doesn't know what to make of the attention that comes with being The Local News.
Danny Pasternak is the character that sets Miriam Gershow's story in motion, but it's told through Lydia's perspective, and in Lydia, Gershow has a distinctive and memorable narrator. Lydia has spent enough time on the fringes of suburban high-school life that when she's suddenly brought into the middle of it - sought out by the people who hovered around her lost brother - part of her remains outside it, observing and dissecting the dynamics of keg parties and aimless hanging out even as she takes part in the drinking and the confused, confusing social maneuvering. Lydia's own feelings about her brother's disappearance are just as confused and confusing, as she is strangely drawn toward the private detective investigating it at the same time she and her parents seem to draw further apart from each other.
Gershow has crafted a resonant and thoughtful exploration of grief - its public rituals and often unpredictable private expression, the ambivalence and conflict that sometimes accompany it - that's an involving, suspenseful page-turner at the same time. Some of the suspense comes directly from the mystery of Danny's disappearance, but for me, a great deal came from my engagement with Lydia and how she experienced the effects of it. I related to her sense of displacement, worried about her misdirected efforts to do something, and hoped she'd find her way through the confusion. While most of the novel is actually told in flashback, Lydia's voice and behavior are realistically adolescent and convincingly portrayed; however, I never had the feeling that this was anything other than a novel for adults. A novel like The Local News brings me back to my occasional ponderings of young-adult literature, because if "a teenage protagonist" is the primary criteria for classifying fiction as YA, this book would fit in there. However, I really don't think that's what it's meant to be, and I'd like to keep this one for the grown-ups.
It's impressive to realize that this is Miriam Gershow's first novel, and I look forward to reading what she does next.
Danny Pasternak is the character that sets Miriam Gershow's story in motion, but it's told through Lydia's perspective, and in Lydia, Gershow has a distinctive and memorable narrator. Lydia has spent enough time on the fringes of suburban high-school life that when she's suddenly brought into the middle of it - sought out by the people who hovered around her lost brother - part of her remains outside it, observing and dissecting the dynamics of keg parties and aimless hanging out even as she takes part in the drinking and the confused, confusing social maneuvering. Lydia's own feelings about her brother's disappearance are just as confused and confusing, as she is strangely drawn toward the private detective investigating it at the same time she and her parents seem to draw further apart from each other.
Gershow has crafted a resonant and thoughtful exploration of grief - its public rituals and often unpredictable private expression, the ambivalence and conflict that sometimes accompany it - that's an involving, suspenseful page-turner at the same time. Some of the suspense comes directly from the mystery of Danny's disappearance, but for me, a great deal came from my engagement with Lydia and how she experienced the effects of it. I related to her sense of displacement, worried about her misdirected efforts to do something, and hoped she'd find her way through the confusion. While most of the novel is actually told in flashback, Lydia's voice and behavior are realistically adolescent and convincingly portrayed; however, I never had the feeling that this was anything other than a novel for adults. A novel like The Local News brings me back to my occasional ponderings of young-adult literature, because if "a teenage protagonist" is the primary criteria for classifying fiction as YA, this book would fit in there. However, I really don't think that's what it's meant to be, and I'd like to keep this one for the grown-ups.
It's impressive to realize that this is Miriam Gershow's first novel, and I look forward to reading what she does next.
July 7, 2009
The Local News by Miriam Gershow is a story about the aftermath of change to a family when a young teen boy goes missing. As a reader, you follow Lydia who shares her thoughts and experiences as a 15 year old girl and then later as an adult looking back.
Lydia is torn between the grief she feels that her brother Danny is missing and the relief that he is not there to tease, harass and ignore her. These are complicated feelings of a young girl that are very well played out in this novel. She is challenged to deal with the depth of her own emotions and balance that with the attention she is receiving at school. She was once a quiet girl with few friends and then suddenly she is getting attention that has taken her to a celebrity like status among her peers and Danny's friends. Lydia grapples with the attention and overall finds it unwanted. She finds herself in situations that she would never have experienced if Danny was around.
Lydia must also deal with her parents neglect as they seem to forget about her as they focus on finding Danny. Danny was the favorite child, at least from Lydia's perspective and she is left to fend for herself in many ways. Everything changes in an instant when a family member goes missing. This novel explores this issue from the families perspective and specifically from a sibling perspective, and does so in a depth and style that is gut wrenching at times and easily relatable at others. Many of us who grew up with siblings understand the mixed emotions and love-hate relationship that you can have with a sibling.
The story ends with Lydia as an adult, 10 years later and brings a closure to the story that I found worked very well. I was glad to see how Lydia had grown as a woman and what happened to her and other family members and friends as they moved forward in their lives.
This is Miriam Gershow's first novel and I think that she has shown excellent strength in her story-telling abilities and writing style that this novel showcases. The Local News is haunting and compelling and you will find yourself drawn into the story all the way through to the end.
Lydia is torn between the grief she feels that her brother Danny is missing and the relief that he is not there to tease, harass and ignore her. These are complicated feelings of a young girl that are very well played out in this novel. She is challenged to deal with the depth of her own emotions and balance that with the attention she is receiving at school. She was once a quiet girl with few friends and then suddenly she is getting attention that has taken her to a celebrity like status among her peers and Danny's friends. Lydia grapples with the attention and overall finds it unwanted. She finds herself in situations that she would never have experienced if Danny was around.
Lydia must also deal with her parents neglect as they seem to forget about her as they focus on finding Danny. Danny was the favorite child, at least from Lydia's perspective and she is left to fend for herself in many ways. Everything changes in an instant when a family member goes missing. This novel explores this issue from the families perspective and specifically from a sibling perspective, and does so in a depth and style that is gut wrenching at times and easily relatable at others. Many of us who grew up with siblings understand the mixed emotions and love-hate relationship that you can have with a sibling.
The story ends with Lydia as an adult, 10 years later and brings a closure to the story that I found worked very well. I was glad to see how Lydia had grown as a woman and what happened to her and other family members and friends as they moved forward in their lives.
This is Miriam Gershow's first novel and I think that she has shown excellent strength in her story-telling abilities and writing style that this novel showcases. The Local News is haunting and compelling and you will find yourself drawn into the story all the way through to the end.
July 11, 2010
The Local News takes place (mostly) during the year Lydia Pasternak turned 16. Lydia is the younger sister of Danny Pasternak. Danny is popular, a football player, and also Lydia's missing brother.
We get a glimpse of Lydia's recent and past relationship with her brother. We get a glimpse into the situations a surviving child might encounter socially and the relationship with her parents. This novel is about Lydia, not so much about the murder/mystery of the missing child.
After finishing this, it was just okay for me. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this. More than halfway through, I was resigned to the fact that the mystery of Danny would not be revealed to us, and that this truly was about Lydia and all her connections/relationships. At just about that time, we do find out the story about Danny. But weirdly enough, I questioned whether it really was what happened and found myself expecting the real truth to come out lol.
I do think that Gershow does go into great detail into Lydia's character as well as her relationships and feelings for the people around her. I really enjoyed the relationship she had with David Nelson. I don't remember exactly what Lydia says somewhere near the end of the book, but it had to do with the fact that she was terrible at loving people. And that TOTALLY summed up the feeling I got about her at the end of the book, and probably why this read was just okay for me.
Here are some quotes:
"Bad news was soothing, as if, at least it was the whole world that was screwed."
"In December we had both a Christmas tree and a menorah. All of our religious practices seemed to come from some patchwork of ambivalence and obligation. I sometimes called us Episcajews and Jewapalians, but really, we were nothing."
"Inconsistency ... is the single most destructive force on a being's psyche."
"It was nice being stupid, the way it made people take care of me."
"Being the lost one, I thought for the first time with a certain envy, wouldn't be so bad."
We get a glimpse of Lydia's recent and past relationship with her brother. We get a glimpse into the situations a surviving child might encounter socially and the relationship with her parents. This novel is about Lydia, not so much about the murder/mystery of the missing child.
After finishing this, it was just okay for me. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this. More than halfway through, I was resigned to the fact that the mystery of Danny would not be revealed to us, and that this truly was about Lydia and all her connections/relationships. At just about that time, we do find out the story about Danny. But weirdly enough, I questioned whether it really was what happened and found myself expecting the real truth to come out lol.
I do think that Gershow does go into great detail into Lydia's character as well as her relationships and feelings for the people around her. I really enjoyed the relationship she had with David Nelson. I don't remember exactly what Lydia says somewhere near the end of the book, but it had to do with the fact that she was terrible at loving people. And that TOTALLY summed up the feeling I got about her at the end of the book, and probably why this read was just okay for me.
Here are some quotes:
"Bad news was soothing, as if, at least it was the whole world that was screwed."
"In December we had both a Christmas tree and a menorah. All of our religious practices seemed to come from some patchwork of ambivalence and obligation. I sometimes called us Episcajews and Jewapalians, but really, we were nothing."
"Inconsistency ... is the single most destructive force on a being's psyche."
"It was nice being stupid, the way it made people take care of me."
"Being the lost one, I thought for the first time with a certain envy, wouldn't be so bad."
April 5, 2013
Honestly, this is one of the most boring books I have ever voluntarily read. Quite honestly, the line "Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done" was the highlight of the whole novel. I thought there would be mystery and suspense, but it was just the story of a girl who ended up not knowing how to interact with people after her brother disappeared. It would have been an easier read if Lydia had been a more sympathetic protagonist, but I just ended up not liking her, wanting to tell her to snap out of it, get on with her life. The whole novel was slow going and tedious. It was a chore just to talk myself into opening it. Usually if a book is this bad, I just stop reading, but I wanted to push through, see if it got any better. It didn't. I basically had to force myself to read the whole thing, and after about 10 pages I was so bored I was falling asleep, so it took longer than I thought it would to finish the novel. There is usually some kind of saving grace in everything I read, an interesting character, an unexpected twist, but I'd be hard pressed to find one here. The premise was new, innovative, and interesting, telling what happens to the family after someone disappears, but the execution of the story was completely lacking. Lydia and her mother never got over what happened to Danny, always outsiders, never comfortable interacting with people, always searching. Her father however, found his way out of all the chaos and moves on. Another thing I didn't like about this novel is that that it didn't really have a conclusion. We found out what happened to Danny at one point, and where everyone is years later, but don't really find out if the relationships that were broken or formed during that time ever get fixed.
Overall, a very slow, boring read. I would not recommend this to anyone.
Overall, a very slow, boring read. I would not recommend this to anyone.
February 13, 2009
This will be out this month, February 2009. I got a galley copy because the writer's partner is my boss!
Fifteen year old Lydia Pasternak--smart, detached, and overshadowed by her larger-than life brute of a sports star brother--is the center of this fine novel. Gershow creates a detailed, complex, and very real portrait of a young woman who has a hard time relating to other folks. Her social dislocation only increases when her brother goes missing. Suddenly, a family (as she realizes later) that was dysfunctional but had this fact hidden by the boisterousness of Danny, her brother, is bereft of their anchor. From being the geeky little sister, Lydia becomes a focus of attention due to her brother's disappearance. She finds herself pulled into what passes for friendship with more popular kids and even Danny's jock friends accept her.
Lydia's confusion at her feelings, her realizations, her alienation, her attempts to fit in, to fade away, to get mad, to be despondent, her crushes...in short, we get a believable portrait of a real person. There will be the private investigator hired to help find Danny and more, but I leave that for you to read.
This did start a little herky-jerky with the timeline, but there are only some minor bumps like that along the road.
What I say next might be considered a spoiler of sorts, so don't read if you are going to get this book.
The end of the novel takes place ten years later as Lydia returns for the high school reunion. I think the ending, which could be interpreted as hopeful, is actually rather sad. It is a testament to the talents of the writer that I was sad because, you see, I wanted things to be good for Lydia; for adulthood to correct her awkwardness. We all know how that goes!
Fifteen year old Lydia Pasternak--smart, detached, and overshadowed by her larger-than life brute of a sports star brother--is the center of this fine novel. Gershow creates a detailed, complex, and very real portrait of a young woman who has a hard time relating to other folks. Her social dislocation only increases when her brother goes missing. Suddenly, a family (as she realizes later) that was dysfunctional but had this fact hidden by the boisterousness of Danny, her brother, is bereft of their anchor. From being the geeky little sister, Lydia becomes a focus of attention due to her brother's disappearance. She finds herself pulled into what passes for friendship with more popular kids and even Danny's jock friends accept her.
Lydia's confusion at her feelings, her realizations, her alienation, her attempts to fit in, to fade away, to get mad, to be despondent, her crushes...in short, we get a believable portrait of a real person. There will be the private investigator hired to help find Danny and more, but I leave that for you to read.
This did start a little herky-jerky with the timeline, but there are only some minor bumps like that along the road.
What I say next might be considered a spoiler of sorts, so don't read if you are going to get this book.
The end of the novel takes place ten years later as Lydia returns for the high school reunion. I think the ending, which could be interpreted as hopeful, is actually rather sad. It is a testament to the talents of the writer that I was sad because, you see, I wanted things to be good for Lydia; for adulthood to correct her awkwardness. We all know how that goes!
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