the fates will find their way

Back in October, i was lucky to happen upon a galley of The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard.  Although it was just sitting on a shelf in my office, i'm not sure how it made it's way there.   It's cover was lovely and immediately drew me to it.  i felt even more lucky when the story turned out to be better than i hoped... a real score.  If you're looking for a story to draw you in, don't need all your questions answered and like your narrator to be first-person plural, you'll probably dig The Fates Will Find Their Way as much as i did.

The tale of  the missing 16-year-old Nora Lindell, told collectively by the boys who knew and loved her before her disappearance, is heavy with the purity of youth and the deep melancholy of suburban dystopia.  The two make a enticing recipe for the eerie and suspenseful unfolding of Nora Lindell's possible story following the night she disappeared.  

Hannah Pittard has done something quite magical here in using this collective voice and the obsession a town has with this young woman. The obsession absorbs the boys minds as they grow into men, married with children of their own.  The magic is in Pittard's way of drawing us through the multiple possibilities of Nora's fate through this collective voice as if each one is fact; details so rich and often lovingly and tenderly thought up by this collective.  

The boys grow into men who do what they are "supposed" to do.  Most get married, have children, become doctors, and although they expect these things lead to happiness, they end up disillusioned and looking for an escape.  Their obsession with what may have happened to Nora Lindell is such an escape; where they can live vicariously through her and with her, no longer left behind.  The Fates Will Find Their Way, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides and The Swimmer, is simply a remarkable first novel.   

Here's a fun interview with Pittard with a bookseller at Powell's.

i can't say how excited i am to host an event with her (& Teju Cole, author of Open City) Friday, February 11th, 7pm at the Odyssey Bookshop.  i hope you can make it out.