Goldengrove-Francine Prose

Goldengrove
Francine Prose
Harper, Sep 8 2009, $13.99
ISBN: 9780060560027

In the summer in Mirror Lake in the northeast, seventeen year old Margaret drowns. Her family reacts differently to the accident though each mourns their loss. Her father regrets naming his daughter after a girl who mourns the loss of summer in “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins and to escape his grief and remorse turns to end of the world scenarios on the latest book he will never finish. Her younger sister Nico tries to put a scientific spin to her feelings of loss while writing down how she and her parents react; even in death Nico still struggles with understanding her late older sibling’s penchant for the dramatic like a poet out of control yet at the same worshiped Margaret’s overt confidence. Their mother Daisy turns to pills as she buries her soul with the body of her oldest child.

At times Nico notes her parents act like they still have two children at home with conversations as if Margaret will respond. Each grieves the loss differently and separately.

Although Nico seems more the adult than her parents, this is a fascinating look at dealing (or not) with the sudden unexpected death of a love one. None of Margaret’s family was prepared obviously for the drowning. Although totally a character study with an extremely thin plot, fans will enjoy Francine prose’s (great surname for a novelist) fine probing prose of the debilitation caused by hiding in the early phases of grief as if expecting the dead person to reanimate.

Harriet Klausner