Bill Clegg "Did You Ever Have a Family"

Hardcover, 293 pages

Published September 1st 2015 by Scout Press (first published August 25th 2015).

What a sad, yet a beautiful novel. I really enjoyed it. It has become one of those books, where you want to take in and  memorise a citation from nearly every page.

The day that was supposed to be remembered as one of the brightest and happiest, the day of June's daughter's, Lolly, wedding became the darkest and the saddest... After June's house goes up in flames in the early hours of the morning and wipes out lives of June's daughter and her fiancé , June's ex husband, and her boyfriend, June is left alone, stricken by grief.

Maxine, a painter June used to represent, loans her a cottage to stay in: “Maxine was in Minneapolis, where she'd been when everything happened. How she found out so fast and knew what was needed, June still did not know. Some people, she decided, magically surface in these horrible moments knowing exactly what to do, which spaces to fill.”

June left alone to face her memories, to think over and over how could such a tragedy had happened... "Through that first week and after, she refused to wail or fall apart or in any way to begin a process that would bring her closer to rejoicing the new and now empty world..." The community around responds with well-wishing and care, but June's grief is too deep to be bearable in a small town where in every place and every person June finds reflection of what happened.

She embarks on a journey and ends up in a small hotel at the ocean. Although the journey is not as long, it is a metaphoric one and does not finish when June arrives to the hotel. The physical side of the journey and the journey of June's memories and thoughts resemble that “half-life, a split purgatory where her body and mind coexist but occupy separate realities.”


But June is not the only one who tells us the story of what happened and what had been happening prior to the tragic accident...
We learn about life in a small town. Days filled with buzz, worries, smiles, tragedies, memories...
We learn about Lydia who had a coloured child and ended up as a single mother smirked upon, talked about, gossiped about....
We watch Luke, her son, grow, develop from a little baby into a troublesome teenager and blossom into a young man... His life, the twists and turns that Luke's path took and where it led him. Luke, who had been so close to his mother when he was young boy, grows more distant towards Lydia. But ends up in a relationship with June and June reconciles Lydia with her son, only in short while to lose Luke again, this time forever. Just like June, Lydia is overwhelmed with the pain of her loss.
“[W]e’ve learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.”

There is more in the book then just the tragedy of the fire. There are other people's lives and memories. And June's temporary hideout in the hotel unfolds more stories of those who shares their time with her. Those who show June kindness, who manage to feel her pain without any word spoken about it, those who recognise that pain because they have had their own share of it.
The story is told from several people's sides. Too many sides for one story? One may wonder.
Every narrative adds something to the accident, to the way life goes on in a small town and to the portrayal of other characters.

Clegg puts his narration in small pieces, like a puzzle. You have to find all the pieces and put them together, only then you see the whole picture in its complete composition, only then you understand better what part each detail plays.
It is written in a subtle yet deep manner. Clegg's writing resembles a watercolour: gentle touch of a brush, no hard marks, no tick layers, yet the story leaves a strong impact, it looks into many issues behind the theme of grief. If you ask me, it is, first and foremost, a book about relationships, more that anything else. Relationships between mothers and children, relationships between partners, friends, neighbours.
It is a story about how to face reality, whatever that may be: a daily battle with ever oppressing routine, loneliness, a loss of the loved ones and a loss of ourselves sometimes.

Clegg's novel is very romantic in a strange way. It is very moving and gentle.
I found so many parts in this book which worded so wonderfully precise, that I wondered why had I never found those words in that same order in my own head, why head I never thought of saying it?... :))) “Why is it only later that things begin to make sense?”
 But I am glad that I have found those words in this book.