The Dependents

by Katharine Dion

One of TIME magazine's best summer reads, a "wise" ( Entertainment Weekly ) and "resplendent" ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) debut that follows a new widower confronting the truth about his long marriage.

After the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college days, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared, raising their children in a small New Hampshire town and vacationing together at a lake house every summer.

Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him -- and how enigmatic his wife was as well. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew.

Katharine Dion's assured debut moves seamlessly between Gene's present-day journey and the long history of a marriage and friendship. Rich and wonderfully alive, The Dependents is the most moving kind of drama, an intimate glance into the expanse of family life and the way we must all eventually bridge the chasm between what we want to believe and what we know to be true.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Family, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Audiobook, Marriage

287 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 2018

About the author

Katharine Dion was born in Oakland, California. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She is also a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in Berkeley, California. The Dependents is her first novel.

Reviews

[Larry H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gene and Maida Ash were married for 49 years. Gene loved his wife very much, even if he didn't necessarily know how best to show it. But he enjoyed their life together, even if he felt that there were times where Maida didn't express herself fully or let him know how she was feeling—about him, their marriage, their daughter, anything.

He isn't sure how to handle his grief. His daughter, Dary, with whom he has never quite seen eye to eye no matter how hard he tried, returns home with her daughter to try and help him, and Gene and Maida's closest friends, Ed and Gayle, also provide assistance and a sympathetic ear. Trying to think of life without Maida feels strange, although perhaps less stressful at times, and he is unsure of how he will spend his time and energy now that he is alone.

"There were people who told him his grief would diminish, but he didn't believe them. That his father's death was still an experience reverberating inside him after all these years suggested that the distance a person traveled from death was just along a circle, and all it took was one new loss to show you that you were still traveling the same line."

As he begins to think about his life and marriage, he starts wondering if Maida was as happy as he thought she was, if she was actually satisfied with their marriage. He begins to question events in their past, things she said and did, and wondered if he was missing signs she was giving. What was the true nature of Maida's relationship with Ed, since it was Ed who introduced the two of them in the first place? Was she looking for Gene to be more, do more than he was? What is the source of animosity between him and Dary?

The Dependents shifts between the present and the past, providing a look at Gene and Maida's relationship from the beginning, and exploring how Gene tries to deal with the loss of his wife and the anxiety this loss is causing him, since he isn't sure what to think about their relationship any longer. You see Maida through Gene's eyes, and you see his earnestness to be a good husband, yet his initial awkwardness at how to initiate a relationship with her.

This is an interesting look at the cycle of grief, and how in an instant you can go from being with someone to their being gone. The book explores the question of how we can ever really know a person, even if we've been with them forever, and whether you should trust your memories or begin questioning things after the fact, and whether the answers to those questions will be helpful anyway.

Katharine Dion is a really talented writer, and she very effectively captured the emotions that accompany loss, and how the grieving person interacts with others. She also dealt with the struggle between acceptance of grief and still wanting more from life, and whether doing so is a betrayal of the person you've lost.

I struggled with this book a bit because I think it left a lot of questions. What were we to believe about Maida, in the end? Was she satisfied with her marriage and her life, or did she settle? Was there more to her relationship with Gene, or others? And why did Dary have such anger toward Gene? I didn't feel like these questions were settled, which left me in as much uncertainty as Gene, and that isn't entirely satisfying.

This is a good effort for a debut novel, however, and I look forward to seeing what comes next in Dion's career.

NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the very first paragraph, debut author Katharine Dion, drew me in....
“Gene’s interest in other people lay primarily in the mystery of their happiness.
Happy children, happy parents tending happy children and small animals —had they always been such evangelists of joy? He now reserved a special kind of misery for the sight of a happy couple. This particular human configuration seemed to have been invented out of despair in everyone else”.

Gene Ashe’s wife, Maida died. It wasn’t cancer - it wasn’t expected. She had a knee replacement surgery. All went well. Yet a few days later she died of a blood clot.
They had been married 49 years.
I FELT THE SUDDEN SHOCK. I’ve been married almost 40 years- ( this Dec. is our 40th anniversary). I immediately wondered why did the author choose a ‘sudden’ unexpected death. She had a reason.

Everything about this novel - every character - the descriptive prose - invites the reader to SLOW DOWN. We are invited to contemplate a series of points of views.
This book requires some thoughtful reading.

Gene Ashe is grieving the loss of Maida. There are things he never asked her....like was their life - not outward life - but the life within - had it been happy? I wondered if he was asking himself the same question?

THIS IS AN INTROSPECTIVE QUIET BOOK - dealing with grief, loss, death, love, memories, friendships, uncertainty & questions unanswered, with considerably complex issues and thought provoking relationships.....and sadness.
ITS NOT A BOOK FOR EVERYONE... It WAS PERFECT FOR ME. I’ve been thinking about the characters intensely.....and our human dependency on one another.

Gene and Maida Ashe were best friends with Ed and Gayle Donnelly.
Ed and Gene met in college - before wives. Ed became a doctor. Gene owned an upscale shoe store.
These two families did everything together - vacation for ‘years’ at White Pine Lake, the Donnelly’s property on Fisher Lake. They had summer rituals: swimming- boating - fishing - birding - croquet - card games - etc. They shared responsibility for sick children - whiny children - passed kids clothes down to one another, etc. All the children were adults with their stories at the time of Maida’s death.

Gene and Maida had one daughter: Dary. She chose to have a child - Annie ( 10 years old) - without a man. There is friction between Gene and Dary. We learn some back story. Gene was nervous being around her when she was a child. Their relationship is complicated.
Dary is aloof and bitter towards her dad - partly we assume she felt judged by her choices by him....plus she is also grieving over her mother’s death. She is angry - wonders if her mother had enough solitude and personal pride about her life besides doing selfless deeds for other people. Her anger is directed toward Gene. As his daughter.... she wants to make sure he is OK, and hires help to come in a few days a week. She lives in California with Annie. Gene lives in New Hampshire.... but while trying to help dad, her cocky indignation spills right out of her mouth.

I think Dary’s hostility was - in part - had as much to do with how she felt about herself - and was grappling with issues that had nothing to do with her father -
much like what happens to all of us when we mis-direct our anger.

As for Gene - he didn’t understand why he had such a difficult time understanding his daughter.
“His whole life he’d been waiting for them to like each other. When she was a child, he thought for certain it would happen when she became an adult. When she was an adult he thought for certain it would happen when she became a parent. But it hadn’t happened, at least not the way he had imagined it would”.
However.......Gene also said this of Dary:
“It was a feeling he’d had his whole life, deeper than a thought, which was that there was nothing she could do to make him not love her — that no matter how many times she transformed herself, his love would transform itself to match her. This was what it was to be a parent—it was to give up control over your own love. To Love where sometimes you didn’t even like. It was something that could barely be expressed within yourself, and even then it made absolutely no sense”.

Ed and Gayle and three boys: Brian,( the oldest), and Michael and Colin. We get to know the boys a little - their wife’s - their troubles etc. - which by the way Ed didn’t have a great cozy relationship with Brian....
but....we spend more time looking at the two couples - Gene and Maida and Ed and Gayle. Each of their personalities are explored -how they lean on each other is explored - and for Gene especially—how all these relationships intertwine with his grieving process.

Gene question if many Maida really loved Ed.
So, Gene comes out and asks him....”did you love my wife?”
Ed says:
“There is a kind of trust that can exist between two people who don’t need much from each other—who aren’t in each other’s business according to the rules of their lives. Maida and I didn’t use each other up. We couldn’t. There was a deep fondness there. A genuine friendship”.

At the memorial....the eulogy speeches are each interesting.....by Gene, Dary, Gayle, and Esther ( an old friend of Maida). Dary and Esther’s speeches send Gene into his troubled thoughts even more. He felt betrayed by his daughter and confused and worried by Esther’s speech.

Adele becomes a new woman in Gene’s life - for awhile. It was sad .... because not only was Gene grieving over his wife’s death - he spent “fruitless” hours wondering why Adele had left him.

There are three parts to this novel.
Part three was so tender - We know Gene’s health is failing.
I read section three twice .....( cried in one part the first time). There were ‘many’ things I liked about it: BOOK TALK....literature....the aura of enchanting poems and novels which filled the human spirit. ......
and the surroundings of the cabin were lovely. I wanted to spend a week there alone with books and trees myself.
“The woods stretched in every direction that wasn’t watery. Large hemlocks, their sweeping branches quivering with deposits of new snow, greened the flanks of the mountain. The tallest white pines spread great brushlike branches over the valley, and the younger trees were naked of needles except on their uppermost limbs. The leaves of beech trees were dead but hadn’t fallen off yet, and they hung upside down like dried-out tawny bats. Some of the Pines had lost their bark and the exposed wood was as smooth as bone and the color of old bone. Still other trunks were splotched with medallions of lichen, their edges ragged and curling, their velvet the vivid yellow-green of a prehistoric thing refusing to die”.

There is some gorgeous writing in Katharine Dion’s debut novel — walking through the woods - down near the lake - to being inside the cabin eating grilled cheese reading Anna Karenina.....to intimate dialogues between characters.

I loved this deeply introspective novel. The writing is sensitive and evocative—
To me —-it showed the value of family, love, security, solitude, freedom,....and the welfare of others. It’s all important. We are dependent on all of these human needs.

Thank You Little Brown and Company, Netgalley, and Katharine Dion

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gene and his wife Maida and Ed and his wife Gayle have been close friends since college. They raised their children together and took vacations at Ed and Gayle’s beach house. When Maida dies, Gene re-lives their marriage and fears that it was not all that he had thought it was. He has never been very close to his daughter Dary and now they seem even further apart. He begins to doubt all of their relationships and a horrible suspicion begins to take root in his mind. Things are further complicated when his daughter convinces him to hire a caretaker whom he’s drawn to.

The characters in this book quickly found a place in my heart. This is a slow burning, deeply thought provoking, intelligently written book. This author is a fearless one, ready to take on issues such as how well we know our loved ones, where does our happiness come from, how to deal with the loss of a loved one, how well we remember the past. She uses great tact and caring in each sentence. This author is a force to be reckoned with and I have great hopes for her future in the literary field with such an auspicious debut.

Most highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

[Buchdoktor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gene Ashe war stets ein kräftiger, sportlicher Kerl, doch der Tod seiner Frau lässt ihn mit 70 Jahren in alltäglichen Dingen hilflos zurück. Die befreundeten Donellys übernehmen für ihn jene Besorgungen, die bei den Ashes Maidas Aufgaben waren. Der Besuch seiner Tochter Dary scheint nun Genes Bild von Maida infrage zu stellen und er grübelt, ob seine Frau glücklich war. Glück scheint mit einem Mal etwas zu sein, das jene unglücklich macht, die nichts davon abbekommen. Um einen Nachruf über Maida schreiben zu können, nähert sich Gene seiner Frau durch Gegenstände an, die ihr wichtig waren. Gene scheint in einer völlig anderen Welt gelebt zu haben als Maida; denn er erkennt viele der Geschichten nicht wieder, die im Rückblick über seine Familie und seine Frau erzählt werden. Seine Hinfälligkeit und seine Orientierungsschwierigkeiten werfen die Frage auf, ob Gene unter einer akuten Trauerdepression leidet, geistig abbaut oder auf der Beziehungsebene schon immer ungeschickt war. Beziehungen fand Gene stets anstrengend, außer der zu Ed.

Die Geschichte der beiden befreundeten Familien reicht weit zurück, Ed Donelly war Genes Tutor am College. Schon damals unterschieden die beiden Männer sich gewaltig, obwohl beide aus einer Kleinstadt in New Hampshire stammten. Gene hatte ein festes Bild von der Welt und wie ungerecht er sich darin behandelt fühlte. So selbstsicher wie Ed damals auftrat, konnte er längst nicht so frustrierende Erfahrungen wie Gene gemacht haben, davon ließ der Jüngere sich nicht abbringen. Ed studiert Medizin und lässt sich als Allgemeinmediziner nieder, Gene eröffnet mit einem großzügigen Kredit seines Schwiegervaters ein Schuhgeschäft. Seit den 50er Jahren, als beide Männer heiraten und Kinder geboren werden, fahren die Familien gemeinsam in Urlaub.

Die unterschiedlichen Interessen der beiden Studenten geben bereits einen Hinweis darauf, wie gegensätzlich sich ihr Leben entwickeln könnte. Genes Leben wurde davon bestimmt, dass er kein Geld hatte, nichts verändern wollte und Maidas völlig gegensätzliche Ziele nicht nachvollziehen konnte. Für einen Geschäftsmann sicher eine problematische Einstellung. In der Gegenwart setzt sich Genes abwartende Art fort, ihm würde es völlig genügen, wenn Gayle ihn einfach weiter so versorgen würde wie Maida zuvor.

Katharine Dion zeichnet das Bild zweier ungleicher Paare, die das jeweils andere Paar als Bühne nutzen, um Konflikte auszutragen - oder eben nicht auszutragen. Ihr Roman wirft die Frage auf, ob wir die Fähigkeit zum Glücklichsein bereits mit auf die Welt bringen, dann wäre sie kaum veränderbar, oder ob wir trotz ungünstiger Voraussetzungen unsere Einstellung ändern können. Darüber hinaus schreibt Dion in sehr anrührender Art darüber, wie unterschiedlich Männer und Frauen die Welt wahrnehmen – und wie erinnerte Familiengeschichten uns diese Gegensätzlichkeit bewusst machen können.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something was keeping me from writing a review of The Dependents by Katharine Dion. I loved the book. I found it thoughtful and moving and surprising, and somber and soulful. Why was I wordless?

It came to me that I identified too much with Gene, the protagonist, a recent widower who can't move beyond the loss of his wife of 49 years.

I have been married for 46 years. I was a month from my 20th birthday when I married. And for all our ups and downs, good times and bad times, my husband has been my best friend. I could feel Gene's loss and knew it might someday be mine, or my husband's.

"In some mad inversion of time, grieving his wife's death resembled falling in love."-The Dependents

After Maida's sudden death, Gene learns that his wife was in many ways a stranger to him. Who truly knows and understands another? We are like locked chests, filled with treasures and terrors we can not share. Gene depended on Maida, saw only her best, assumed she was happy. But now he wonders, did she love him? Was Gene her 'one and only' or merely a comfortable compromise?

In college, the shy Gene latched onto the more worldly Ed. Ed pairs with Gayle, who Gene also liked, and introduced Gene to Maida. It took Gene a long time to make a move to make Maida his girlfriend; he fell in love with her first. He was elated when she agreed to marry him. He was lucky, he thought. Their friendship has remained central to all their lives; they vacation together at the lake every year, raising their kids together.

Maida's dad set Gene up in his own shoe store business. Gene thought there was something honorable in fine footwear. But shopper's values changed, and the store closed. Maida had her work at the college child care center. Gene went to his old office out of habit.

Maida and Gene had a daughter, Dary, who has a daughter Annie. Dary is no comfort to her grieving father; she insists on an understanding of her mother that evades Gene's ideal. Dary insists Maida had other lovers before him and needs outside of her work as a childcare provider, wife, and mother. That she had given up some better version of herself to be Gene's wife.

As Gene begins to see who his wife truly was, he doubts everything he took for granted, struggling to understand how love was not enough, how he had failed the women he loved.

Gene must come to terms with the meaning of his life when so much had eluded him. When our life is nearing completion, should we second-guess our choices, regret the life we lived? Or realize it's what we wanted, after all.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book just seemed to go on and on. At the end, I felt I had more questions than answers even with the detail the author provided. Story lines didn't feel all the way developed. The book did not live up to the summary.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit torn between whether to give the book 3 or 4 stars, I settled on three. The book itself is engaging: Gene, a widower who has recently lost his wife of a lifetime, has to deal with the struggles of her death, his obstinate daughter, and his former playboy friend and his wife, along with their children. The books deal with: grief, regret, and loneliness, along with the ties that bind us because of, as well as in spite of these things.

The end of the book drags a bit, waiting to reach the point of the 20-30 pages before the book actually closes. Though I can't emphasis enough: It is a good read, I also felt it lacked some depth it might otherwise have cultivated if some of the other characters were fleshed out more. This is, arguably, part of the point of the book... that we can only know even those closest to us so well, and no better, and we're forced into Gene's own perspective of "Not knowing"; but, as a story it merely leaves us wanting, and not in a good way.

The trouble with this is: every other character but Gene is background noise: his friends, his daughter, a new love interest, only exist as partial question marks. Why Dary doesn't get along with her father is never investigated, or asked about, why Adele left, why his best friend Ed's kids even exist in the story. I feel like with a bit more time and more depth we could have discovered more about what was actually happening. The only big deal if a package being requested from a lawyer earlier on in the book, only to show up in the end, with nothing being covered about why it existed to begin with that I can remember.

So it's worthwhile for what it does cover, and what it does explore, but it would have been an even better book if the other characters had been more fleshed out.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't really understand this book. I felt lIke it didn't really go anywhere and would have been better as a short story than a novel. The author has a wonderful way with descriptions, though, and the writing was beautiful.

The story follows Gene in the months after his wife's death. We catch glimpses of his relationships with old friends, his daughter, a housekeeper (?), and the summer house his family went to for decades. The problem is, even with all of the descriptions and details, I never felt like anything was fully explored.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know how this book ended up on my radar-- I got it from the waiting list at our Library. The characters are colorless; they have no depth. I couldn't understand why the "friends" were ever friends in the first place or why they stayed friends. In fact, the main character is so clueless, I wondered how he managed to stay married for 49 years. We know he loved his wife dearly but we also conclude that he never told her or showed it! I found the book to be rambling and depressing--yet, I did finish it. I hoped for a deep "wow" moment where it all came together at the end. Oh well.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing in many ways, but read more like a short story to me rather than a satisfying novel.

[Conny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nach dem plötzlichen Tod seiner Frau findet sich Gene etwas hilflos den alltäglichen Aufgaben gegenüber; vieles, was Maida immer gemacht hatte, übernehmen nun seine Tochter Dary und die befreundete Familie Donnelly. Insbesondere der Besuch von Dary lässt ihn ins Grübeln verfallen: Wie sah Maidas Leben aus, wenn er nicht da war? Was hatte sie beschäftigt? Und: War sie glücklich? In den Geschichten, die an der Trauerfeier erzählt werden, erkennt er Maida kaum wieder.

Die Zweifel, die Gene plagen, sind zunächst noch ganz leise und werden erst im Verlauf des Romans stärker. Als Leser*in ist man sich darum nie ganz sicher, ob diese tatsächlich berechtigt sind oder ob Gene langsam geistig abbaut; so oder so scheint er nicht allzu geschickt in Sachen Beziehungen zu sein, was sich auch in den Freundschaften oder im Umgang mit Dary äussert. Es fällt ihm schwer, Probleme zu benennen oder gar Konflikte auszutragen, wodurch vieles unter der Oberfläche schwelt – während langer Jahre.

Von Katharine Dions Debütroman «Die Angehörigen» habe ich mir Einblicke in ein Leben erhofft, das vom «Wir» zurück zum «Ich» finden muss. Genes Trauerbewältigung dreht sich allerdings stark um Banalitäten und (leicht unsympathische) Selbstzweifel; interessante Wendungen bleiben aus, man hat am Ende des Buches nicht wirklich ein anderes Bild von Maida als zu Beginn. Auch die Frage, was Trauer mit dem zurückbleibenden Partner macht, wird nur im Ansatz beantwortet. Insgesamt ist die Geschichte zwar gut erzählt, aber nichts Weltbewegendes.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, before this book I never thought I’d want a widower to fall into frozen lake at the end just because I was bored with him. This book isn’t terrible, I assume it’s just not for me—it’s quiet and slow and didn’t match up with my expectations. Based on the description I thought he would flesh out his relationships more after the deepening “chasm” with his daughter but all he did was tiptoe around it with his best friend and no one else. He could have had an enlightening conversation with the friend/eulogist but that was dangled and dropped. There are some nice insights here and there about relationships but poor Gene ends the book still without much more understanding of anyone in his life.

[Jennie Rosenblum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book to slow down and relish. Which I did and as I slowed down I enjoyed it even more. The main character, Gene, a recent widower explores his life from a different perspective after the unexpected death of his wife of 49 years. The author uses lyrical phrase to help describe the ideas of happiness, grief and reflection in the characters. Most of the story is told through Gene or Gene’s preconceived ideas of others. Although he can appear clueless at times Gene has heartfelt memories and experiences. Gene uses his honesty as he grieves to question and examine his happiness and the struggle for happiness of the people close to him. Using the one connection of the death of Maida, the author allows us to look at people at various points in their lives, as well as through different life choices and perspectives, giving us insight into reflections of the varying definitions of happiness.

[Jeanne Boudreau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a depressing novel. A man questions his relationships, with his deceased wife, his daughter, his best friend. What was real and what was contrived? I feel like I need some sunshine, a hug or a smile to get me out of the funk I feel after finishing this book.

[Lynne Spreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this novel because it was featured as a book of the week in People magazine. What a surprise that they would feature a story about an older person, in this case a widower in his seventies who begins to have doubts about the truth of his marriage. Since I seek out novels about people in the second half of life, I was excited to read it.

First the good: Katharine Dion is a superb wordsmith. She offers up some of the freshest metaphors and most profound observations about the human condition that I've read in a long, long time. You can check the first several of my highlights for examples.

And, at the end of the book, she delivers a deeply moving statement about how we might evaluate our lives when we are older. I loved that.

The not-so-good: the book is overly wordy. Fully the first 20% is backstory. There are ruminations that don't contribute to the main theme. Frankly, it was tedious enough that I hurried through a couple of pages here and there. My highlights and notes reveal this. The prose was so dense in places as to make me feel I was missing the author's intent. Was X, Y, or Z meant as a metaphor or clue that would become more meaningful later in the book, or was it just an indulgence by the writer? (See highlights for examples.) I felt like I needed to flag certain paragraphs or thoughts in case they were part of a tapestry Dion was weaving, the threads of which were thin or innocuous at the moment but might, if one stepped back by the end of the book, reveal something grand. But I can only hang with that kind of mental exercise for so long before I get frustrated, and thus the 4-star rating. However, if you are more dedicated than I, you might love this book.

[aparagraphofbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meine Meinung :
Mit großer Freude begann ich mit der Lektüre "die Angehörigen " einem Roman, dessen Klappentext mich vollkommen überzeugen konnte.
Und auch die ersten Seiten, lasen sich toll, denn der Stil der Autorin, ist exzellent und hat einen charmant zurückhaltenden und einnehmenden Erzähltakt, dessen Aufbau mich auf literarischer Ebene durchaus für sich einnehmen konnte.

Doch nach wenigen Kapiteln bemerkte ich leider einige Schwächen z.B. in der Stilistik der Charaktere, denn deren Ausarbeitung bliebt leider weit hinter meinen Erwartungen zurück. Diese blieben blass und konnten die Thematik des Romans nicht auf den Leser transportieren und diese Thematik war zu wenig ausgefeilt und verfehlte jegliche Form der Emotionalität oder der Basis, die die Thematik hätte tragen können.
Ganz im Gegenteil diese Geschichte blieb blass, nichtssagend und angekündigte Tiefe der Thematik blieb fast gänzlich aus .
Meines Erachtens nach, sucht die Autorin ihr literatisches Ziel (die eindeutige Thematik ) , findet diese aber nicht.

Mein Fazit:
Ein herausragender Schreibstil reicht leider nicht, um eine Geschichte tragen zu können. Zu viele Schwächen innerhalb der Ausarbeitung und die fehlende Emotionalität, machen diesen Roman leider zu einem recht blassen und nichtssagenden seines Genres.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'No one couple had played a more important role in his and Maida’s lives than Ed and Gayle Donnelly.'

The lingering question is, what didn’t he know? After Gene’s wife Maida unexpectedly dies days following complications from routine surgery his world is upended. He remembers an argument about knowing, what is useful to know and what isn’t. In relation to death, it would only increase fear, change nothing but Maida, being more logical, preferred to know. Strange a year later she’d be dead. He picks at their past like an infected wound. Was she happy? He had never asked her about the ‘tucked-away life’ that is usually ‘secret even to oneself most of the time’, and also kept things from her.

Their dear friends Ed and Gayle are trying to keep him afloat in the waves of his grief, loss. But there is a story that makes him realize that the life they shared for so long had stories that he was never a part of, stories new to his old ears. How could that be? How could there be unknowable parts of Maida’s life never shared with him, her husband? An interesting line Gene says, “We exist without them, you know?” They do, but differently. Could his wife and Ed have been in love? Then there is his child Dary, who couldn’t be any more different from Gene if she tried. She is trying to be present for her father after the shocking loss of her mother, but it’s obvious from the start that her life is far more liberal than he can stomach. There is an ocean of distance within their relationship. Maybe he has oppressed her, does it in small doses with his unfiltered comments and questions. Strange to have a child so different from you, a child who was more her mother’s in some ways. Maybe her irritation, hurt, anger is tied in some way to never expecting to lose her mother, the parent she always chose. Their relationship has been strained from the start but it was during college he believes the real loss occurred. What happened? He doesn’t truly know his daughter’s inner life, which is interesting to note he is wondering if what he knew about the ‘internal life’ of his own wife and their marriage is genuine. How much changes, within in own hearts, if the big things in our lives are other than what we believed? Does love feel any different, is it diminished, in the end, does it alter if someone loved less? More?

It’s a sort of torture to live backwards, to try to come to knowledge when your beloved is no longer there to ask, confirm or deny whatever it is one is torturing themselves over. It’s also just as painful to try to change a relationship with your child when your wife is no longer there and you feel like a stand in. He is missing so much about Dary, when she is right is right there, as far from him as his dead wife. There is a cowardice in routine with our loved ones, in not risking breaking out of our set character.

Then there is Adele, hired to help him out so Dary can get back to her ‘self-serving’ life. He has always been sore about her having a donor to have her child Annie. Is it because it hurts him to think his daughter feels a father is ‘arbitrary’ and therefore, it means he didn’t matter to Dary either? Is Adele another chance to belong to someone again, so he won’t be drifting forever, someone who will touch him, be his constant companion as Maida once was.

Grief occupies more than it’s share of space in this novel. If Gene doesn’t understand the heart of women, particularly those he should be closest too, it’s more that he doesn’t really understand himself. His life feels like a blink, everything happened so fast, unexpectedly. Often the reality of life, of children, is nothing like you envisioned. Having a child who upsets everything he feels is solid and moral about the world, loving a woman who may have only shown her core to another, even if there was nothing sexual, this was not the life he thought he would own. Illness that steals in, he isn’t really ready, but we never are. He spends a lot of time torturing himself, wondering if he was conspired against by his wife and best friend Ed, his entire life! If his child is just another betrayal. I don’t know that Gene ever gets the answers, maybe being blind to the serious stuff is how he prefered to live. Why didn’t he ever have these deep conversations, aiming loaded pressing questions her way? Maybe there was nothing to hide, and it’s just his own mind eating itself. God willing this won’t be old age for all of us, wondering what was real, true. I have to say, at least for men my father’s age, I think in many families women have always carried the relationships and the many men would be unsure of their footing if their wife died first (in relation to the children, fully grown or not). I don’t know if it’s generational, and I don’t mean to discredit men and say they aren’t close to their children, but in many cases it’s mostly been on a woman’s shoulders to reach the depths of their children’s core, to understand and track their inner-life. Men sometimes find themselves lost at sea, whether relationships are close or strained, when they are widowed. Surely not true of every family now, but times were different when I was growing up. On top of losing his wife, he has to confront the reality that he and his daughter are strangers to each other.

A quiet, slow read about being forced to wake up in your own life, when your partner is no longer there to steer it.

Publication Date: June 19, 2018

Little, Brown and Company

[Heather Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

My actual rating would be 3.5 stars. This book is a story of Gene and his thoughts/feelings/interactions after his wife Maida passes away. It is beautifully written but definitely a story told through Gene’s memories and perceptions of his wife, daughter, and close friends.....the story just kind of drifts just like thoughts do. Gene’s grief over the death of his wife leaves him confused and lost and looking at all of his life in bewilderment. It is a book to read slowly and thoughtfully and with the understanding that this isn’t a story that goes from point A to point B and concludes with an “ending”. It is a story of emotion and the inner voice that we all hear especially during times of grief. This book will leave you with more questions than answers-just like life does.

[Claire Barfell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book on Goodreads Giveaways. This is a very philosophical book. The author examines grief and relationships. When Gene's wife Maida dies, he is very sad and tries to remember the good and bad in their relationship. His daughter's life is very different than what he wanted for her and he worries about her finding love. He comes to realize that he has a fear of being alone. Also, he does not always do what the doctor tells him to. It is a sad book, but the author is very intelligent and shows a lot of depth and feeling in her writing.

[Uta Braun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, ich kann Gene so gut verstehen, seine Zweifel. Ich glaube, wir sind uns da sehr ähnlich! Die Geschichte hat noch nicht nur deshalb tief berührt! Wann ist mein Leben ein erfühltes Leben! Wann und wie weiß man, ob man den richtigen Partner geheiratet hat? Habe ich meine Kinder ausreichend auf das Leben vorbereitet und wenn ich sie „los“ lasse grenze ich sie dann aus meinem Leben aus... Ach Gene, auf all das hätte auch ich gerne eine Antwort!

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ich weiß nicht so genau, was ich zu diesem Buch schreiben soll… Es war ganz nett, sprachlich schön, wenn auch etwas verworren. Aber im was es in der Geschichte eigentlich ging, kann ich nicht sagen - mit dem, was der Klappentext beschrieb, hatte es allerdings wenig zu tun. Ich habe die ganze Zeit auf eine Erleuchtung gewartet, aber der Roman eierte einfach weiter vor sich hin.

[Renee Poust · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main character was not very likable. Nor did I care one way or the other for his situation. The supporting characters were better all around.

[Michele]

Very rarely do I shelve a book and not finish. This book was so bad I had to quit.

[Elizabeth Lapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. Just okay.

[Braden Hepner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A subtle rumination on the complexity, versatility, and resilience of the human heart. With a studied approach, this novel explores the heart’s fidelity and the power of death and love. Well done.

“He lay down on the ice with the polished moon of the lake floating all around him, and he proposed a life to Maida and then remembered he’d already lived it.”

[Farrah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conflicted about this one. The writing was lovely but it was more like a young first time novelist’s thought piece vs a fully formed work of fiction. I got engaged in the main character but frustrated with all the loose ends throughout and at the end.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is the relentless narrative of the pathos of aging and physical decline illustrated through the life of Gene Ashe. We meet the pathetic Gene after the death of his wife Maida and follow his path to hiis examination of his life and his relationships. It is a novel that is unrelentingly depressing. Does Gene have any joy?
He endlessly reflects upon his skewed relationships with his closest friend, his suspicions about his relationship with his late wife, even questioning the paternity of his only child.
The reader sees the pathos of his unrequited attempt to find a new love.

This is a sad and depressing book, especially for older readers. Is this really what happens? Is total sadness the fate of those who outlive their partners? I am uncomfortable recommending this to anyone who is older or deals with depression.

[Bill Rehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katharine Dion has written an extraordinary novel. While I think of myself as a 'fast' reader, I read The Dependents very slowly. For four reasons, probably: 1) because I found myself re-reading this book over and over again, sometimes whole sections, sometimes a paragraph or a sentence, and often just one of the wonderful metaphors that seemed to appear on almost every page; 2) because this book made me stop and think about my own life, my own marriage, and my own relationships with my children; 3) because I was struck by how this young author could articulate the thoughts and complications of an aging man; and 4) because I just didn't want this book to end. Dion's insights and observations are remarkably thoughtful and profound, and her writing is simply gorgeous.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not emotionally engage with this book. In fact, page after page, I waited in vain for *something* to happen. It was one very long interior monologue. And not to give anything away, but that oblique ending stumped me. Did... something happen?

Basically, the characters never completely materialized for me, including the narrator Gene. And the scene where Maida ignores her screaming baby was a total turn-off. So, yeah, didn't like the people in this one very much, making it difficult to care about what happened to them.

Another irritant was the messed-up timeline. OK, Gene was born in 1933. If the action is present-day, that would put him, Maida and their friends in their mid-80s, which they didn't quite seem to be. And yet it had to be present day, because everyone was on a computer and Gene was pondering the modern-day meaning of the word "queer."

Also, if Gene, Maida and their friends married in the mid-1950s, how the hell did they potty train their children with gummy bears, which were introduced in the early 1980s? Sorry, but discrepancies like that completely disrupted the reading for me.

[SaraKat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for my book club. I had a hard time staying awake long enough to finish this book and ended up reading the last page with just enough time to rush to my book club meeting. The writing was beautiful at times, but the subject matter was just not to my taste. My club and I were pondering what made a relatively young female author choose an old man grieving a wife of 49 years as a protagonist. This book is very cerebral and is mostly just the reader following along while a 70 year old goes through the grieving process and has self-doubt about how good his life really was. The book jacket hints at some scandalous facts that he finds out and deals with, but nothing like that happens really. I kept waiting for the action to start and kept being disappointed.

During college, Gene (our grieving widower) enjoyed reading and talking about literature and said something that was especially apropos considering we were reading for a book club:

...the flash of connection that was possible between two people who had read the same book.

I always feel a kinship with other people when we discover a book in common...that is, until they say something about the book I disagree with. Then I can't stand them again. :)

The book also had an interesting bookend theme. Being a baby and being an older person are often compared since at both points you need someone to take care of you. And he also compared the intensity of falling in love with the intensity of the grief after the death of a loved one. Everything circles and comes back to the beginning.

Someone might even call him an irritable old man. But the smug young people who casually threw that phrase around didn't stop to consider that maybe there was a good reason to be irritable toward the end of your life, having withstood a measure of disappointment that was not really fathomable to people who believed they still had enough time to reverse events that didn't favor them. When you thought about it, it was amazing that everyone over seventy wasn't perpetually irritated.

He he he.

Why go to Puerto Rico and miss the one time of year when people everywhere embraced silly, timeworn rituals? For a brief moment, you could pretend kindness was universal and generosity contagious.

Everyone is cheery and helping their fellow man and then it is January and no one cares for anyone anymore. It is a strange reason to like Christmas that he gives here.

On children:

You can see the seed of the whole person in their faces. There's something remarkable about seeing it and having no idea what kind of see it is and just blindly giving it everything--water, air, peanut butter--in case one of those turns out to be what it needs.

I love it. I was a seed that needed plenty of books, pets, and hugs.

The part of the book that made me think the most was a dream that Gene had wherein he was going to heaven and the angel was asking each person who wanted to enter the pearly gates what their purpose in life was. Gene was agitated because he didn't know. The angel told them to "Just make something up." I laughed at that and then started wondering what I'd say. Is it bad that I don't know or is that a question that most people wouldn't be able to fire off an answer to?