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"No
Time to Wave Goodbye" by
Jacquelyn Mitchard
;
Random House
($25)
———
For every
avid reader, some characters linger after a book is
finished, gently intruding as the reader moves on to
other works, popping up at unexpected times to insist
that their story isn't finished. For me, one of those
characters has long been
Vincent Cappadora
, a secondary but extremely important young man in
Jacquelyn Mitchard's
1996 megaseller (it was the first
Oprah's Book Club
selection) "The Deep End of the Ocean." In
that book, Vincent's little brother Ben is kidnapped at
age 3, then returns to the family at 12, forever
changed. Vincent blames himself for Ben's disappearance,
and we get a strong hint of his anguish.
Mitchard
makes Vincent the central character of "No Time to
Wave Goodbye," which revisits the Cappadoras 13
years after Ben's return.
Vincent,
Ben and sister Kerry have become young adults, and Beth,
the savagely mournful mother in "Deep End,"
has achieved a sense of peace and safety.
The
family is still dealing with the repercussions of Ben's
abduction, however. As the book opens, the Cappadoras
have gathered for the premiere of budding filmmaker
Vincent's documentary, which shares the name of the
book. Beth watches in disbelief, then horror, as she
realizes the film tells the stories of five families
whose children also disappeared, but did not return.
Beth soon
gets over her sense of betrayal, and the family throws
its support behind the formerly ne'er-do-well Vincent,
whose film is nominated for an Oscar. But tragedy
strikes, throwing the family back into the miasma of
grief they thought they'd left behind.
As with
"Deep End," Mitchard gorgeously combines
piercing psychological insight with one heck of a
suspense story. I read the last 150 pages in one
breathless sitting.
Mitchard
also has a knack for summing up a character's emotions
in simple, perfect imagery, as when she describes an
exhausted Beth late in the book: "There was nothing
animated within Beth except a hot, pale column of rage,
like a third rail threaded through her torso."
If you
haven't read "Deep End," go there first. If
you have, be prepared to once more be completely
immersed in the Cappadorra family with "No Time to
Wave Goodbye." Now I'm wondering how the sister's
opera career turns out.
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