Underburn
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An ex-actress, her son, and his boyfriend flee the scorched California landscape in this “wonderfully engaging tale of both family and the underside of fame.” —Natalie Jenner, international-bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society
Iris Flynn is an acerbic, self-sufficient seventy-three-year-old widow with a minor past as a B-list actress and a streamlined kitchen inspired by Marie Kondo. But her composed and simplified existence is disrupted when her son Frank lands on her doorstep after his rental home is destroyed in a wildfire, the latest in a string of personal setbacks for Frank. He arrives with Logan, his young and handsome boyfriend, a featured extra on a teen soap opera with a loyal Instagram following.
Soon, news from Iris’s estranged family in Maine forces everyone out of their comfort zone. Iris convinces Frank and Logan to travel with her to the potato farm from which she made a quick getaway fifty years earlier, unleashing a funny and poignant family saga about secrets, forgiveness, and the shifting map of the human heart. Underburn is an extraordinary story about family resilience, missed connections, and second chances that assures us it’s sometimes okay to create our own Hollywood endings.
“Gaythwaite’s debut novel Underburn mirrors the deceptive richness of the very generational ties it so charmingly explores: the long memories, conflicts big and small, surprisingly pivotal moments, and rediscovered bonds. One rarely encounters characters drawn with such candor, warmth, and humanity: you will gladly cheer and care for everyone as they seek to make peace with the past, while risking it all for a brand-new future.” —Natalie Jenner
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Gaythwaite's promising debut, middle-aged Frank Flynn moves with his younger boyfriend into his mother's house after the couple's rental home is destroyed in a fire. It's not Frank's first disaster; his life was already wrecked by an opioid addiction, though he's sober now and works at a rehab. His actor mother, Iris, once had a career in Hollywood. She's a formidable woman whose need to share her opinions "felt unstoppable, like a seizure." She's quick to educate Logan, Frank's "unapologetically handsome" partner and a fledgling TV actor, about Bette Davis and Grace Kelly movies. After Iris receives news from her estranged sister, Celeste, that their mother has died in their Maine hometown, she returns after 40 years with Frank and Logan. The sisters, who "had never been close... as if they were cut and styled from different patterns," have a prickly reunion—especially when they discuss the terms of their mother's will. Stretches of the book meander, but Gaythwaite's strength is in his subplots, whether describing Logan's knotty history as an escort in Los Angeles or Frank's battles with addiction, and the finale in Maine is worth sticking around for. The result is choppy but ultimately satisfying.