Home of the American Circus
A Novel
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- 14,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
The acclaimed author of the “lyrical coming-of-age novel” (Good Morning America) The People We Keep returns with a luminous contemporary women’s fiction story about strong female characters, family estrangement, found family, and the transformative power of redemption.
It’s been ten years since Freya Arnalds left a goodbye note on her parents’ kitchen table and fled her hometown of Somers, New York, driving up the coast to disappear into a lackluster life as a bartender in Maine. But, on the cusp of her thirtieth birthday, when an emergency leaves her short on rent, Freya returns to Somers to live in the derelict house she inherited after her parents’ untimely death, and soon discovers that her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, is secretly living there.
Despite all attempts to lay low in her old town, Freya reunites with childhood friends, encounters familial enemies, and stokes old flames while she fights to stay afloat and give her niece a better life than the one she’s had. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey learn to lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.
Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel examines the mythology of a broken family, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Larkin's charming latest (after The People We Keep), a 30-something woman forges an unexpected bond with her teenage niece. Freya, a bartender in coastal Maine, returns to her hometown in the Hudson Valley after her parents die in a car accident, having inherited the ramshackle house she grew up in. She's surprised to find her troubled niece Aubrey, 15, secretly living in the house. The reason at first seems to be teenage rebellion, but the troubling truth is gradually revealed, along with Freya's fraught history with her sister, Steena, who is Aubrey's mother, and with Steena's scummy husband, Charlie. Freya gets a job at a local inn and reconnects with old friends, who, along with Aubrey, help her repair the house. While the storytelling is simplistic—Steena, Charlie, and the sisters' late mother are dastardly, while those on Freya and Aubrey's side are correspondingly good-hearted—Larkin explores with tenderness and nuance the strong yet complicated relationship between her protagonists, and successfully uses the details of home repair as a metaphor for the rebuilding of Freya's and Aubrey's lives. It's a cozy tale of new beginnings.
