The Lines

by Anthony Varallo

Set in the summer of 1979, when America was running out of gas, The Lines tells the story of a family of four—the mother, the father, the girl, and the boy—in the first months of a marital separation. Through alternating perspectives, we follow the family as they explore new territory, new living arrangements, and new complications. The mother returns to school. The father moves into an apartment. The girl squares off with her mother, while the boy struggles to make sense of the world. The Lines explores the way we are all tied to one another, and how all experience offers the possibility of love and connection as much as loss and change.

Genres: Fiction

230 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2019

About the author

Anthony Varallo is the author What Did You Do Today?, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, forthcoming from the University of North Texas Press in Fall 2023. He is also the author of a novel, The Lines, as well as four previous short story collections: This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I'll Know (TriQuarterly Books); and Everyone Was There, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award.

Currently he is professor of English at the College of Charleston, where he teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The review's TL;DR for here. Go to my blog to read it...and I hope you will, but people being inexplicably (to me, anyway) click averse, it's a really good read.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unremarkable, everyday event – the break-up of a family. But what a remarkable book Varallo has written about it. This totally compelling novel captured my heart from the very first page, such is the compassion, empathy and insight it displays towards a family in crisis. It’s narrated from the shifting perspective of the four main characters – the father, the mother, the girl, the boy – who are never named but who come alive on the page so that I really felt I knew them. Each of the voices is distinct and authentic, particularly the voices of the children – and it’s never easy to get a child’s voice to sound convincing. Varallo manages that expertly. Tautly written, with never a wasted word, the story unfolds over one hot summer in 1976, capturing the minutiae of daily life, the adjustments that have to be made when a separation happens, the damage that is caused, the heartbreak and the sadness. Such a rewarding and memorable read. Highly recommended.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this quietly simmering novel, set against the backdrop of the 1970's oil crisis. Told in alternating perspectives of four unnamed family members over the summer following the parent's separation, the novel is a series of linear vignettes, masterfully capturing the emotional toll of a family falling apart, and separately navigating an uncertain future, and, for the children, the bizarre mysteries of growing up.

The daughter is 10, the same age I was at the time the book is set, so there were lots of nostalgic memories. Mood rings, anyone?

The book describes a different world, but Varallo captures the timeless universality of what it means to be human, and what it's like to be lost, lonely, hopeful, sad, and brave.

[Klaudia Piaseczna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for The Lines…. Unfortunately, the book didn’t quite deliver.
The action was extremely limited—so much so that it often felt like nothing was really happening. While a slow pace can work when it's offset by strong emotional depth or lyrical language, I didn’t find either here. The choice to leave some characters unnamed felt like it was reaching for a kind of literary minimalism, but instead it created emotional distance.
Stylistically, I expected more. The language felt flat at times, and with such a stripped-down plot, I had hoped the writing itself would carry more weight.
In the end, the book was quite boring and didn’t offer enough substance or insight to make up for the lack of engaging action or character development.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Varallo's other four books are short story collections, and I've read and love them all--he proves himself equally adept at the novel form, with his signature wry humor and great affection for his characters both present in The Lines, too.

Set during the gas crisis of the 1970s, Varallo has written a coming of age story that's also what I'd call a family dramedy. A brother and sister, both very young, witness their parents' separation and subsequent household upheaval and are forced to come to terms with these new circumstances over the course of the hot and muggy summer. There's a funny and menacing (and wholly unfit to be a role model) grandmother down in Florida, as well as an older boy who is wounded himself and prone to burning up whatever he can get out to the Weber grill. Both parents begin dating other people and the boy and girl don't stalk off in a huff over this; I love how well Varallo writes young characters; he doesn't resort to any cliches of the child as small, bossy adult or angry, implacable dictator in their portrayal.

A very fine novel.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

via my blog:https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'When the children return home from another weekend at their father’s, their mother says she has something to tell them. Great, the girl thinks. Whenever an adult tells you they have something to tell you- run. Run fast! Run fast and keep running.'

It is the summer of 1979 and one family of four is splitting apart, a time when separation and divorce wasn’t quite as common as it is today. The girl seems to understand all the things that hum beneath the surface even though she is only 10 years old, things her brother, at the age 7, remains clueless about. Is this going to fix all the sorrow, this divide? How will becoming two families make life easier? It just doubles the problems doesn’t it, when you split things in half? The boy certainly has questions about life as it’s unraveling.

Father is no longer living at home, father no longer being the man of the house isn’t there as things fall into disrepair. Is he really still a father then? Does the boy then step into daddy’s too big absent shoes and become man of the house? It’s all mass confusion. The kids are taking on the slack left behind now that mom returned to school. Then the dating, the parents are dating people! Bad enough they have to get used to two homes, two rooms, two separate lives now doors are opening to strangers? Dad has a girlfriend, they won’t mention this to mom, and this girlfriend Sarah becomes a stand in mom when they are at their dad’s. In fact, she is often more engaged than their father, watching them at the pool.

The father had forgotten what being a bachelor means, the ‘essential’ things he can’t recall, the cooking, the food shopping and darn if he doesn’t miss his garage. Father not that good when it comes to attentiveness towards his son and daughter, hasn’t that always fallen to the mother before? Why can’t father make relationships work, even with someone new? Why must the girl be so aware of the ways her daddy falls short? There is something obscene in seeing your parents as human, with their fault lines.

“Why, the girl wonders , is life so often a matter of answering yes to things you’d rather say no to?” Like meeting Mom’s new man. Seeing your father date is bad enough, and seeing his relationship fail is something she doesn’t wish to witness. Both parents are letting some parenting go, it’s different depending which home they are at. The summer is a bust, school feels more tempting than all this time on their hands, all this terrible change. There is a new man on the scene, Cliff. The mother’s friends are pushing her, find someone. Cliff is someone.

Cliff can fix things, make life easy, help bear the brunt. Sister is getting salty with her mother, challenging, fed up. With Cliff comes Marcus, who thinks he knows everything and is probably as clueless as the brother and sister. Everything is a crap show, the adults have all lost their senses. There is no compass, life without an anchor even Gumma tells her grandchildren their childhood is over now, coming from a broken home. It’s so sad when the adults try to make a new normal, failing time and again. The parents are terrible, according to Gumma. Everyone and their opinions, their insights! Bitter adults!

Is their marriage really over? Will their parents realign themselves and everything return to normal? One thing is certain, it’s going to be a terrible summer. All that happens is beneath the skin and mind, “There’s such a relief, the girl thinks, in knowing no one knows your thoughts.” For both the mother and the father, life full of financial demands, at least they no longer have to attend to each others bottomless need, but what to do with all this freedom? Life is still life, as a mother, as a father there will always be things and children pulling you this way and that. As the novel says, “Human misery, there’s never a shortage of it”, whether you are married or not. The children shoulder the separation and their parents failings, understanding raining upon them as heavy as the suffocating heat of the summer.

Yes, read it.

Publication Date: August 15, 2019

University of Iowa Press

[James Passaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read! Only the second novel I have read that uses fragmentation and vignettes throughout the whole novel. They weave into a beautiful picture in the end, the last chapter really bringing all the tension together. Highly Recommend!

[Tyler Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. This book. This book!

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Varallo nails the introspection of adolescence! Written in short scenes and bursts, I took my time with it. Themes and the backdrop of the gas crisis are there without being overbearing.

[Jenny Kaage Werking · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book and we just met the author at our neighborhood book club...will write more later.