The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Library of Virginia's Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award for Fiction!
"A brilliantly moving and unforgettable novel." - Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life
Janet Peery’s first novel, The River Beyond the World, was a National Book Award finalist in 1996. Acclaimed for her gorgeous writing and clear-eyed gaze into the hearts of people, Peery now returns with her second novel, The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs.
On a summer evening in the blue-collar town of Amicus, Kansas, the Campbell family gathers for a birthday dinner for their ailing patriarch, retired judge Abel Campbell, prepared and hosted by their still-hale mother Hattie. But when Billy, the youngest sibling—with a history of addiction, grand ideas, and misdemeanors—passes out in his devil’s food cake, the family takes up the unfinished business of Billy’s sobriety.
Billy’s wayward adventures have too long consumed their lives, in particular Hattie’s, who has enabled his transgressions while trying to save him from Abel’s disappointment. As the older children—Doro, Jesse, ClairBell, and Gideon—contend with their own troubles, they compete for the approval of the elderly parents they adore, but can’t quite forgive.
With knowing humor and sure-handed storytelling, Janet Peery reveals a family at its best and worst, with old wounds and new, its fractures and feuds, and yet its unbreakable bonds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Peery's powerful new novel, Amicus, Kansas, a prairie town grown so helter-skelter that "it looked like it had been laid out by rival drunks," reminds 88-year-old Hattie Campbell of her family: her husband, Abel, and their large brood one long dead, the others struggling with addiction and incapable of sustaining long-term healthy relationships. The tendency toward shiftlessness in all but the oldest child (Doro, who lives respectably in Boston) is most pronounced in the youngest, Billy: middle-aged addict, long-time HIV sufferer, and "a showboat with flags and bunting unfurled." Despite being a bit of a showboat himself, Abel cannot tolerate Billy's flamboyance, not to mention "the way he went through money. And his froufrou French. And the way his mother doted on him," so Hattie overcompensates, enabling Billy even more and doing her best to shield her irresponsible son from her husband. The story itself isn't plot-heavy; rather, it moves forward in the nudges Peery gives her characters to reveal themselves, to interact and illuminate the dysfunction of their aging, dying family. This is a potent and memorable novel.