ASK AGAIN, YES is a deeply felt, carefully observed, and difficult to read tale of family crises

ASK AGAIN, YES
MARY BETH KEANE
Scribner
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness. How much can a family forgive?

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis's wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian's wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next 40 years. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while haunted by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

I DON'T REMEMBER WHO GAVE ME THIS LOVELY BOOK, BUT THANK YOU!

My Review: I'm not a spoilerphobe, as I've mentioned before, but there are certain events in this book that it would just rot on ice for you not to see for yourself for the first time. So there will be some tap-dancing around some events.

What matters to me in a read, the thing I seek and must find or I'm put out and feel I've been hard done by, is the sense that I'm seeing characters make efforts, take chances, do things, and as a result of whatever combination of those things the author chooses, they need to change. Not necessarily dramatically, or for the better or for the worse. But there needs to be some perceptible alteration in that character's life, sense of purpose, or station.

That is very much not a problem in this story.

Immigrant Francis is Irish to his core. He moves to New York because 1970s Ireland was not the Celtic Tiger it became decades on. His adjustment to American manners and mores wasn't easy on him, but he fell in love with the right woman and built a life with her. So that base is solid, right?

It is a truth universally recognized that people are their own worst enemies. Actions that seem, in the moment, inevitable or destined to occur are deeply stupid and cause problems it's hard to imagine. Yet here we are, with only the moment to live and as often as not without a clear understanding of the past to build on. As Author Keane says, "We repeat what we don't repair." That just rang me like a bell the first time I read it. Such a lovely, distilled way to say the truth as I've learned it the hard way.

The quiet of the house when she kept to her room was not the peaceful silence of a library, or anywhere near as tranquil. It was...more like the held-breath interlude between when a button gets pushed and the bomb either detonates or is defused. He could feel his own heartbeat at those times. He could track his blood as it looped through his veins.

Families are the prime breeding ground for things that need repair. Most often we don't see that...in ourselves, of course, since it's incredibly easy to see in others and there's even this thing called "fiction" to feed our schadenfreude watching others screw up chances to repair the damage done to us. But some damage is done in some families that is, in the truest sense of these words, irreparable and unforgivable. That's when the stories get really good.

Telling her, bringing that story to England, spoiled England for her. When she left for America two years later, she knew she would be smarter. She'd bring none of Ireland with her.

But no matter where you go, there you are, right? Our selves and our bodies are coterminous if not identical, where one goes there the other is as well. It's not always that great a feeling. But unless we repair the breaks, well...you're adults, you know already. And how sad, how burdensome is that knowledge.

The burden travels down generational rivers, too. In this story, Peter the son of truly miserable man and truly evil woman, falls for Kate the daughter of stoic parents whose inability to communicate doesn't keep them from mangling each other. There's a bad patch (!!) and the young people are separated against their wills; there's a reunion, and what flowers is a very beautiful blossom of hope and love.

He dreamed of sharing an apartment with Kate someday, coming home to her each evening and telling her about his day, hearing about hers, going to bed naked with the covers pulled up to their chins, feeling her warm skin next to his when he woke up every morning.
–and–
If they could do all those things and pay their bills and not dread going to work each morning, coming home each night, then that was a life. That was a great life, in Kate’s view. What else could there be? If they reminded themselves that these small things were enough, she believed, then they’d always be okay.

They're having different relationships. That's so often the way with couples, and sadly most often between couples freshly in love. The true emotional core of the party of the second part isn't always easy to reach, but the fact is most people don't really even ever try. It's hard. It's vulnerable. It's often met with anger or rejection or outrage. Who tries, they are abusive! Intrusive! I need my space! Who resists, they are elusive! They are secretive! Why won't you trust me and let me in?

Surviving those shoals, accommodating each other and bending to and fro, allowance-making and temperature-taking, survival...until new shoals hove into view as soon as the seas looked smooth.

And then she saw it so clearly, the whole trajectory of their lives, a twin flare of lights against the gunmetal winter sky: we're born, we get sick, we die. Beginning, middle, end. She saw her life as if held aloft by her own hand, and in an instant it spun away from her. Where did she want it to land? She was in the middle. The exact middle. Peter too. How could she have failed to notice that the beginning had come to an end?
–and–
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, he knew. It was that she loved him so much that it frightened her, loved him so much that she worried she might have to protect herself from it. He tried to let her know that he’d figured that out, finally, that there was no need to explain, but then he realized that she might not know it herself.

It is a damn difficult thing to keep being in a present-tense relationship with someone over a long period of time.

They'd both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room or anyone who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.

Allow this novel's steady pace to lead you where the story goes. Possess your soul in patience, don't get agitated and skip and flip; stand on the grass with Author Keane. Make a memory. Make it well.