Kate Racculia's first novel is an engaging read, a story of misfits who come together out of loneliness and who make, for a while, an offbeat family. The story opens with Arthur Rook, a Hollywood photographer besotted by love for his quirky wife, Amy, who then dies -- electrocuted at her job, building monsters for movies.
Armed with a box of her baffling memorabilia and her enormous, cranky cat, Arthur makes his way back East to Amy's hometown, where he rents a room in a boardinghouse run by her high school friend Mona. And the book simply explodes from there. Plot, characters, secrets, back story, subplots and sub-subplots -- there's much to keep track of in this rich and overstuffed book, but it's all well worth it.
Mona has a secret. Her daughter, Oneida, has a bunch of secrets. The boy who Oneida likes has a secret, and the boy who likes Oneida has a secret, and so does his father, a big one.
You'll figure out the main secret that drives the plot quite early, but that won't spoil anything because waiting for the characters to catch up is so much fun.
Racculia's characters are eccentric yet entirely believable; you'll even swallow the whole sub-subplot about the security guard who makes a living forging masterpieces of art. Her only misstep comes toward the end, where she keeps building when she needs to start winding things down, and the last few pages are a bit too crammed with resolution.
Echoes of Anne Tyler and Elizabeth McCracken flit through this book, which is about the choices we make and the reasons we love.
