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Product Description
Nine year-old Teddy is playing next door with his best friend when Eric pulls out his father's handgun and hands it to Teddy. The telephone rings; the gun goes off, shooting -- and killing -- Teddy's two-year-old half sister Trina, who was playing in a wading pool in the yard outside, with Giselle, their mother, by her side.
Thus begins Marly Swick's second novel after the highly acclaimed "Paper Wings." As with her previous work, Swick resolutely travels the domestic landscape, detailing delicately and truthfully the effect of Trina's death on the unstable triangle of the family left behind. Each member finds their bonds of love and loyalty tested, and each is resilient in the face of their loss, but for different -- perhaps too different -- reasons: Giselle must get Teddy through the crisis, but Dan, his stepfather, having just lost his daughter, has no such responsibility.
Told alternately from the point of view of Giselle and Teddy himself, "Evening News" is a beautifully accomplished novel about resilience in the face of loss -- and about the irrevocable damage that both the loss and the resilience can inflict.
"A book that
Amazon.com Review
In Evening News, Marly Swick's affecting second novel, 9-year-old Teddy accidentally kills his baby half-sister, Trina, with their next-door neighbor's gun. Until the accident, the family had been happily living in sunny Southern California, Trina's father, Dan, teaching at a college, their mother, Giselle, back in school finishing up her B.A., Teddy adoring Trina. But her death ruins everything. Giselle wants what is left of the family to cling together, but Dan can't rise above blaming his stepson for his daughter's death, and Teddy can't help but feel that blame. Dan turns to support groups and self-help books for solace; Giselle takes to self-medicating with wine, beer and gin. Then Teddy's real father, who lives in Nebraska, sends for him. Luckily, Giselle is forced to follow.
Evening News captures both the ordinary and the extraordinary nature of sorrow. At one point, Giselle comes upon Trina's pink pacifier. This element of ambush was the thing that she found hardest thing to take. Day after day you accustomed yourself to the dull, lulling ache of loss. But nothing could accustom you to the sneak attacks, the sudden brutal trip-wire--a pacifier, the knitted bootie stuck between sofa cushions--that set off a fresh explosion of grief. --Katherine Alberg
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