April 24, 2017
Kitses’s debut chronicles a critical day in the strained lives of Helen Nichols and Tom Foster, the parents of three-year-old twins in the New York suburb of Devon. While living in Queens with Helen and working at a science magazine, Tom began a brief affair with his colleague Donna. Though reluctant to be a parent, Tom had twin girls, Ilona and Sophie, with Helen, as well as another daughter, Elana, with Donna. Helen learns about his indiscretion, though he doesn’t confess the identity of his affair partner or that he had a child with her. After a move to the isolating suburbs, Tom is commuting daily to a job that he dislikes while Helen does tedious design work from home. The stress of dealing with toddlers, coupled with her thankless work, leads her to unleash her frustration on a pair of rough teenagers. After her neighbor’s kid Nick comes to the rescue, Helen spends the day wondering if someone might be gunning for them. Meanwhile, Tom learns from Donna that a job offer in London might take Elana away from him. Donna wants Tom to come clean with Helen about everything; he’s still hesitant despite Donna’s threat to bring lawyers into the matter. Finally, a series of events force him and Helen to deal with one another. All these conflicts are realistic and compelling: the loss of income coupled with a lifestyle Tom and Helen can’t really afford puts a strain on their already tested marriage, with the couple’s negative propensities exacerbating the problem. The book’s ending hits a note that’s a touch too optimistic, but is still in keeping with the theme that there’s no easy way out for these characters.
April 1, 2017
Over 24 increasingly suspenseful hours, a family's suburban life unravels.A tense domestic drama, Kitses' first novel alternates between the points of view of a husband and wife torn apart by what they don't tell each other. Tom and Helen have moved from Queens to a small town 90 minutes up the Hudson River with their twin 3-year-old daughters, but their life isn't as bucolic as they had hoped it would be. Though they're both working hard--Tom at a news wire service and Helen as a freelance graphic designer--they're having trouble making ends meet, and the town for which they had high hopes turns out to have a seamy underside. As the day goes on, full of frictions major and minor, both husband and wife come close to reaching the breaking point. Tom finds himself in a confrontation with an old lover with whom he has a complicated relationship, while Helen, already simmering with anger, finds herself taking out her feelings on a pair of teenagers she meets in a park, with unfortunate results. Leavened with occasional humor, particularly directed toward the wire service, the novel gradually and inexorably ratchets up its suspense, with each tiny choice that one of the characters makes spiraling out into a path of destructive behavior. Even as the consequences of these choices grow more severe, Kitses keeps them believable so that the reader's increasing dread can't be easily dismissed. The author anchors the family's story in a larger contemporary social reality, in which the actions of the couple are shaped not just by their emotions, but by the "blighted, postindustrial" town where the value of their house is constantly declining, the fact that both Helen and Tom have been edged out of steady jobs into marginal work, and the lack of affordable child care. The novel succeeds as both a disquieting tale of ordinary horror and a portrait of a marriage at a tipping point.
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May 1, 2017
Tom and Helen decided to move to Devon, a small mill town in the Hudson Valley, to give their twin daughters a genuine suburban upbringing far from the Manhattan crowds. Sure, they bought their house at the height of the market, they've hurdled career upheavals, and now they're juggling preschool tuition on multiple credit cards, but at least they have each other, right? It's far from the idyllic suburban experience they expected, as Tom and Helen's long-buried secrets are threatening to rise to the surface. They have problems much like any other couple couldan affair, jobs in jeopardy, anger issuesbut things have never felt this heavy. The action takes place over 24 hours, from sunrise to the last train out of Grand Central and back again. Kitses manages to keep her debut novel well paced, offering heart-pounding tension and periods of quiet reflection in equal parts. Tom and Helen are relatable, proving that seemingly small decisions can quickly balloon into overwhelming situations. Fans of Matthew Norman, Sarah Dunn, and Emma Straub will enjoy this cautiously optimistic domestic drama full of small kindnesses and deep betrayals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)