Evening News: A Novel - Softcover

Swick, Marly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316890642 ISBN 13: 9780316890649

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2000

Synopsis

Nine year-old Teddy is playing next door with his best friend when Eric pulls out his father's handgun and hands it to Teddy. The telephone rings; the gun goes off, shooting -- and killing -- Teddy's two-year-old half sister Trina, who was playing in a wading pool in the yard outside, with Giselle, their mother, by her side.

Thus begins Marly Swick's second novel after the highly acclaimed "Paper Wings." As with her previous work, Swick resolutely travels the domestic landscape, detailing delicately and truthfully the effect of Trina's death on the unstable triangle of the family left behind. Each member finds their bonds of love and loyalty tested, and each is resilient in the face of their loss, but for different -- perhaps too different -- reasons: Giselle must get Teddy through the crisis, but Dan, his stepfather, having just lost his daughter, has no such responsibility.

Told alternately from the point of view of Giselle and Teddy himself, "Evening News" is a beautifully accomplished novel about resilience in the face of loss -- and about the irrevocable damage that both the loss and the resilience can inflict.

"A book that

About this title

Review

In Evening News, Marly Swick's affecting second novel, 9-year-old Teddy accidentally kills his baby half-sister, Trina, with their next-door neighbor's gun. Until the accident, the family had been happily living in sunny Southern California, Trina's father, Dan, teaching at a college, their mother, Giselle, back in school finishing up her B.A., Teddy adoring Trina. But her death ruins everything. Giselle wants what is left of the family to cling together, but Dan can't rise above blaming his stepson for his daughter's death, and Teddy can't help but feel that blame. Dan turns to support groups and self-help books for solace; Giselle takes to self-medicating with wine, beer and gin. Then Teddy's real father, who lives in Nebraska, sends for him. Luckily, Giselle is forced to follow.

Evening News captures both the ordinary and the extraordinary nature of sorrow. At one point, Giselle comes upon Trina's pink pacifier.

This element of ambush was the thing that she found hardest thing to take. Day after day you accustomed yourself to the dull, lulling ache of loss. But nothing could accustom you to the sneak attacks, the sudden brutal trip-wire--a pacifier, the knitted bootie stuck between sofa cushions--that set off a fresh explosion of grief.

--Katherine Alberg

From the Back Cover

Everywhere acclaimed for its acute emotional sensitivity and its astonishing narrative power, Evening News explores the world of a family devastated by loss as it takes us into the lives of a nine-year-old boy who shoots his young half sister, of a stepfather who cannot forgive, and of a mother whose love for her son threatens to destroy her marriage.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0316890642
• ISBN 13: 9780316890649
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464