Evening News

No matter what stage of life you are at when reading Evening News - this book will affect you. Marly Swick looks at the death of a child from every angle and speaks in all the right voices so that the reader can truly feel everyone's emotions - no one is right, no one is wrong but they are all learning to live with death in their own way.Evening News begins with on eof the most memorable opening chapters I have read in a long time. 9 Year old Teddy and his best friend Eric are playing with Eric's father's gun. In an instant, Teddy's beloved baby sister Trina is gone and his whole world has turned upside down and inside out.Teddy must deal with his mother, Giselle's and step-father, Dan's devestation as well as his own. He must live with the guilt and fear, Giselle must learn to grieve for Trinia and protect her son and Dan must learn to live and forgive. To make matters worse, Teddy's father wants Teddy to move back to Nebraska to live with him and heal.Marly Swick handles all of these emotions like an artist and the reader feels equally as confused as the charaters - The novel takes the reader through the first few months and years after the accident so that the reader learns what toll the devestation takes on this family. Will they learn to surivive this together or will they have to fight their battles on their own. She is so deft at creating the feelings of these characters through words that every reader, no matter whether they have suffered a loss in their lives or not, will grieve for Trina and her family.This is a fabulous novel - I can not wait to see aht Marly will write next. I highly recommend this book.

This is the sort of book you wish more books were like -- a literary page-turner. The author pirouettes repeatedly on the line between drama and melodrama yet manages not to cross it; she gets every image and emotion just right without boring the reader or choking on her own prose. I found myself worrying about the characters in the middle of the night. My advice would be to close the book when you hit the page that says "Epilogue." As for the first 335 pages, however, I don't think I can recommend them highly enough. Let's hope all the talented but turgid novelists clogging up literary fiction these days take a lesson.

In reading some of the other reviews of this book, I found it interesting that folks who submitted some of the less favorable reviews were disappointed with the overall grim tone of the book or the lack of redemption for some of its characters. I think that's what made this book so incredibly real. I can't imagine that people who have been through this type of tragedy would ever feel complete redemption; and I can't imagine that they would ever be able to have completely "normal" lives again. This story haunted me long after the day it took to read it simply because of the complexity of emotions involved in the situation described. I look forward to more books from this author.

I found this book to be a riveting story - I began reading it one Sunday afternoon and couldn't put it down until I finished it early Monday morning. It touched a deep chord in my mind and even after I fell asleep my mind continued to churn on it, to the point even of giving me a nighmare (unusual for me). The book takes us through the paces of how tragedy can tear a family, and lives, apart. Very moving - I highly recommend it.

Marly Swick's Evening News is one of the best books I've read in a long while. The examination of how a family survives the accidental shooting of a two year old girl by her 9 year old half brother is brilliantly rendered. The plot moves effortlessly, with insights into the human condition on virtually every page. Ms. Swick has created characters that I absolutely believed in and cared about. I bought extra copies of this book just to give to friends and relatives.