Every time I see something new by Joseph O’Neill it takes me back to the early days of this blog. When I started it in 2008, Joseph O’Neill had just published his debut novel, Netherland. Not only did I review it in the first month of this blog’s life, but I was reading it in the hospital when my second child was born. It just takes me back in a good way. While I really enjoyed Netherland, I have not spent a lot of time reading more of O’Neill’s work. This one — “Keuka Lake” — has an intriguing start, though, so I’m hoping to get to it soon:

Between the ages of fourteen and fifty-four Nadia does not for a single minute not have an admirer or a boyfriend or a better half. Then Drew, her husband, disappears forever.

Each minute of the next six months is a thicket. The thickets contain police officers, undertakers, insurance agents, attorneys, claims adjusters, benefits counsellors, human-resources workers, notaries, friends. Unforeseen names—Emmaline Cortez, Omar Eaton, Dalary Mason, Clyde Bender—become very important then very unimportant. Somewhere in there her two daughters fly in from and back to their respective lives, in Chicago and Asheville. In early January, Nadia emerges from the last thicket. She drives up to Montreal.

Please feel free too