Stay

Sullivan's debut novel is a memoirlike, first-person narrative of a family quickly disintegrating following the death of a child. The story of the relentlessly dysfunctional Stone family can be compared to Mary Karr's memoir The Liars' Club. However, unlike the spunky Karr, 11-year-old narrator Emily Stone suffers in silence. It is the summer of 1974, one year since her twin brother, Ham, drowned on Martha's Vineyard; during that time Emily has not spoken. At the family's home in small-town Cawood, Mass., her father, Donald, a modestly successful inventor, copes with the tragedy by drinking, eating candy bars and terrorizing his remaining seven children. Mum tends to new baby Owen, quietly suffers her husband's physical abuse, and loses a few fingers when she neglects an infection. Older sibling Elizabeth Ruth, 13, is raped by a neighbor, tells no one and shaves every hair from her body. Emily sees it all, but clutched deep inside her is the memory of holding her brother's hand on the bridge, hearing her father urging them to jump and feeling Ham's hand being yanked from hers. Emily tries to piece together what she remembers from the accident and learn how to continue living as a half person, without her twin. The story culminates in a return trip to Martha's Vineyard, where guilt is exposed and changes promised. Harrowing as her tale is, Sullivan's remarkable ability to capture the rhythms of life in a large family, and her understanding of the desperate love and loyalty elicited by shared hardship, light up the darkness. This is just one in a sea of similar narratives, and as such may be overlooked, but it is a quietly moving first novel. (Nov.) FYI: Sullivan is the coordinator for PEN New England.