Carry the One
A Novel
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3.8 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A moving and “beautifully observed” (The New York Times) story about how the events of a single night ripple through the lives they touch, revealing how deeply interconnected we are, and how those who flourish and those who unravel may be far closer than they seem.
Late one night in 1983, after Carmen’s wedding reception at an artists’ co-op in rural Wisconsin, a carload of drunk and tired wedding guests begin a drive back to Chicago when tragedy strikes on a dark country road.
Over the next twenty-five years, the events from that night continue to haunt those involved in the accident as they connect and disconnect, never completely free of each other or the accident that binds them together. It echoes through each of their struggles with love, relationships, marriage, parenthood, careers, political activism, and addiction.
Carry the One powerfully explores how one life affects another, and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect. Whether they take refuge in art, drugs, social justice, or love, Carol Anshaw’s characters are sympathetic, funny, and uncannily familiar as they reflect back to us our deepest pain and longings, our joys, and our transcendent moments of understanding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The one that must be carried when the Kenney siblings add themselves up is the girl who was hit and killed when Nick and Alice were driving home, stoned and stupid, from their sister Carmen's wedding. That's the first chapter: the rest of the novel and the rest of their lives sex and drugs and prison visits, family parties and divorce, raising teenagers, painting, politics, and addiction play out with that guilt and loss forever in the background. Anshaw has a deft touch with the events of ordinary life, giving them heft and meaning without being ponderous. As the siblings' lives skip across time, Carmen's marriage, shadowed by the accident, falls apart; painter Alice's career moves forward unlike her life, as she remains stuck on the same woman, her former sister-in-law; and astronomer Nick fights, with decreasing success, his craving for drugs. Funny, touching, knowing about painting and parents from hell, about small letdowns and second marriages, the parking lots where people go to score, and most of all, about the ways siblings shape and share our lives Anshaw (Seven Moves) makes it look effortless. Don't be fooled: this book is a quiet, lovely, genuine accomplishment.
Customer Reviews
Carry the One
Poignant and thoughtful account of how an accidental death can irreversibly alter the lives of those involved. How each one reconciles with themselves and the world their guilt and responsibility. Many times I found myself re-reading the lines to gather and enjoy their depth and intuitiveness.
Carry the One
I swam in these characters, so well drawn. This book is a velvet hammer.