This is quite a book: compact, dense, and lyrical. It tells the stories of the rippling effects of a love affair between Ada, married to Silas, and Luce, married to Emily, on the lovers and their families. Perspectives and time frames shift from 1957, when Luce is murdered, to 1962, when Luce and Emily's daughter, Jane, falls in love with Carl as Ada and Silas's son Huck pines for her, to 2004, when Jane and Carl's daughter Marne returns home from a vagabond life and begins a erratic romantic relationship with Ada and Silas's youngest son Ray. The 2004 story line runs chronologically, as Marne who makes objects from paper, and Ray, a salvager, overcome the facts that Marne is the granddaughter of a man who Ray's father is presumed to have killed, that Marne's brother Alex is Ray's best friend, and that Marne can't abide Ray's brother Huck. Huck is probably the most interesting character in the book, a poet and artist wrapped in a thug's demeanor. Ada as a cranky old woman is pretty intriguing too, and her weekly Scrabble games with Jane, are a character in themselves. I think it takes place in coastal Massachusetts.
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