The Float Test
A Novel
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Descripción editorial
"What I loved most about The Float Test is the sense of place. ... The adult children of the family gather on the hot ground of their childhood following their mother’s death, where they try to untangle decades of betrayals and sorrow, and reclaim their sense of home." — Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
From Lynn Steger Strong, critically acclaimed author of Flight, a sophisticated and layered novel about sisters, betrayal, love, and climate change, for readers of The Dutch House and The Most Fun We Ever Had.
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. When the four are reunited it's clear that much has changed between them. Equally unsettling are the changes around them; the climate of their hometown is hotter and more oppressive than ever before.
A family story is, of course, only as honest as the person telling it. This family story in particular is fraught with secrets about kids and sex and jobs and why the Kenner matriarch had a gun in her underwear drawer. The biggest secret of all though is the secret of what happened between Jude and Fred to create such a rift between the two once-close middle sisters. Over the course of a sweltering Florida summer, the Kenner siblings will revisit what it means to be a family and, if they are smart and kind and lucky, come out on the other side better for having each other.
A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the remarkable latest from Strong (Want), a grieving family's reunion provides a stage for conflicts over who has the right to tell another person's story. Jude Kenner, a corporate lawyer, returns from New York City to her hometown in Florida after her mother's death, dreading the reunion with her three siblings. There's Jenn, the bossy oldest sister and mother of six; middle sister Fred, a novelist with whom Jude isn't on speaking terms (the details of their rift come out later); and the youngest, George, a trader who's separated from his wife. When Fred finds a gun in their mother's nightstand, a Chekhovian hint of danger enters the narrative. Jude soon retreats to New York, not disclosing to her siblings that she's been fired from her job, while the other three stay behind. Jude, who narrates, takes the same liberties a novelist would to delve into her siblings' lives ("A lot of what I'm saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I've imagined my way into because why not"). Not only does the story yield a fascinating meditation on the nature of fiction, but it exhibits profound empathy for each of the characters. This is Strong's best yet.
