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Kevin Alan Milne
Center Street / Hachette
Book Group
June 10, 2010/ ISBN 978-1599952970
General Fiction
Amazon
Reviewed
by Beth E. McKenzie
Twenty-nine-year-old
Sophie Marie Jones is emotionally stuck to her ninth birthday. She
still feels responsible for the accident that took the life of her
parents and grandmother, and she has structured her life so she
never can be more than that demanding child in the back seat questioning
the love of others. Things are looking up for Sophie when, with
the help of a couple of motherly cupids, she meets Garrett and they
start planning a wedding.
Twenty pages
later he calls it off and he can't tell her why, until a year later
he comes back and wants to explain. He wants to make her happy again;
please just one little date for one hour please? She rejects him,
tells him there is no such thing as real happiness and, after much
debate, he agrees to put an ad in the Seattle Times to seek 100
stories of true happiness. If he can get 100 happy people she will
listen.
I spent most of this book wanting to slap Sophie. I don't think
you could ever get over the loss of your parents - I have never
been required to face such a loss -but humans are built so the pain
can become less raw over time. Sophie works hard to keep the nerves
exposed; to keep the guilt she feels inflamed.
There were way too many coincidences to be believable, but that
was the whole point of the story: individuals intertwine to come
together to make the story of our lives. Many invisible hands hold
us up and build our world. Because it is incomprehensible that all
these things could come together randomly, the Ancients spoke of
the Fates. As each new piece of the puzzle falls in place, it is
seen by Sophie's adoptive mother as a demonstration of the Hand
of God.
I really liked the way this story was told. I'm not sure what it
is called, but I think of it as "Family Style." It doesn't
start at the beginning and follow a timeline to the end. It is more
like when you visit family and somebody says, "Remember two
years ago when..." and the next cousin brings up something
from last week, and your grandma talks about when she was a child.
It all fits together to bring you a picture of a family, whether
you know them all or not.
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