#ask again yes

[bookishlyvintage]

05/02 pub day: The Half Moon, Mary Beth Keane

[full thoughts] This book is about a couple that split, but they somehow find their way back to one another indirectly. The bar Half Moon is the main topic of this book, and infertility is kind of the secondary topic. Long chapters & a slow pace, but an interesting read overall

[quoted-books]

...and sometimes when he watched her - searching for something in her bag, or peeling an apple with her knuckle guiding the blade - he felt a shiver of panic that he'd almost not met her.

Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

[bookswithjulia]

A thrift store purchase!

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

In better holiday news, some new additions to my bookshelf! (Fifth and sixth from the top were from family; the rest, I bought myself with some of the money I got.)

[kindledspiritsbooks]

A beautiful novel about family, love and forgiveness.

The extension of forgiveness and understanding, even to the most flawed characters, was deeply moving but I also appreciated the depiction of this forgiveness as a gift and a privilege.

[maryannmackey]

'I regret having a child,' she said to him once, for no reason at all, as he was doing his homework. 'Greatest regret of my life.' It was quiet in the kitchen, just the two of them, Brian on an overnight tour. There were two potatoes in the oven, the house full with the earthy scent of roasting skins. Peter was about ten at the time, maybe eleven, and still, a decade later, she could see the way the white oval of his face had snapped up in surprise. He'd looked right back down at his homework page as if it hadn't happened, but she could see in his posture that she'd thrown him, that where before he was concentrating in earnest, now he was just pretending. The tips of his fingers were white where he was gripping the pencil. The lead point hovered above the page. It had taken her a long time to tell Dr. Abbasi about that moment, her absolute worst, worse even that the times she'd smacked him, worse than shooting Francis Gleeson in the face. And whenever she glimpsed that moment -it came to her at any time, without warning, and always felt like a punch in the mouth- she wondered if it was possible that she had none of these things the doctors said she has, paranoid personality disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, the diagnosis changed and morphed every year, new names for the same symptoms, but whether, in fact, she'd tricked them all, in a way, by going along, by taking the meds, by going to the session, tricked them the way Brian used to say she'd tricked him into getting married, into have a second baby, having Peter, when he'd never gotten over losing the first. She wondered if she was simply very, very mean.

Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

I love a good family drama so I was hugely excited when I was approved for a NetGalley ARC of this highly-anticipated 2019 release. I was prepared for a ride and oh wow, did I get one!

Ask Again, Yes follows two families who live next door to each other in suburban New York. Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope served in the NYPD together and over four decades, their families’ lives become intertwined -namely through the deep friendship and romance between the Gleesons’ youngest daughter Kate and the Stanhopes’ son Peter. When a life-altering incident occurs, the effects ripple through the years...

There is a strong theme of mental illness and its impact on the people around it and I absolutely loved the way it was dealt with. Mary Beth Keane manages to inject a huge amount of empathy and compassion into the atmosphere and situation that the Stanhopes are living in. There is a reading of this book that says that the mental illness is what causes the catalysing event but I couldn’t help feeling that there was a lot more to it than that. More deep-seated insecurities, prejudices and fear-based complexities than a straightforward, easily diagnosed mental condition. While the climax was shocking, it almost felt inevitable. Like this was the way things were always meant to be. The bomb was always going to detonate. 

There is something instinctual about Kate and Peter’s love. One could argue that they’ve grown up together, are six months apart in age, both heterosexual -of course they were going to end up together or at least flirt with the idea. However, the author writes passages like the one above where Kate spends days and even weeks, fully distracted by Peter’s absence, obsessing over where he could be with her whole physical being. The hopeless romantic in me wants to pronounce them as a case of soulmates and this fits nicely into the overriding mantra of the novel of ‘what will be will be’.

The more I read, the more time that went by, the more my heart broke. The above exchange between Peter and his uncle George pretty much sums up the reasons for what happens to Peter over the last third of the book. I was in pieces as his life progressed and changed and spiralled. I could completely understand the reasons for it and the powerlessness that I felt to stop it seemed to echo Kate’s emotions, which meant I was able to walk with her too. I don’t remember the last time I was so wracked with frustration, sympathy and downright anger that it all seemed to make some kind of weird sense.

There is a huge theme of forgiveness in this novel too. Forgiveness at the most profound level. Francis finds the strength and the understanding within himself to take a bold step in forgiving the person who changed his life irreparably. Kate eventually learns to forgive the person who has expressed such hatred towards her for her entire life. There is even a sense that Peter forgives both of his parents for their collective mistreatment of him throughout his life. After such an emotionally charged story, it’s the perfect denouement.

‘But things are meant to change, Peter said. Because life changes and people change. As long as we change together, we’re okay.’

I read Ask Again, Yes in one breathless sitting on a Saturday afternoon. I became so invested in the central characters and the writing style was so absorbing, compelling and readable that I simply had to keep turning the pages. I was so grateful to have an ending full of peace and satisfaction because I’m not sure I could have handled much more emotion and drama, having just read almost 400 pages of it!

I’ve since learned that Mary Beth Keane has two other books, both historical fiction based in Ireland, so this is certainly a far cry from her usual work. However, if she is ever inclined to write another contemporary family drama, I’m here for it!

[blackflypassages]

There was no real way for a person to try something out, see if he liked it...because you try it and try it and try it a little longer and next thing it’s who you are.

Mary Beth Keene, Ask Again, Yes