The Local News by Miriam Gershow

Release date: 2009 / 357 pages

Synopsis (from back cover):  Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her.  As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother’s shadow. While Danny’s athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school, Lydia’s smarts relegated her to the sidelines, where she rolled her eyes at her brother and his meathead friends and suffered his casual cruelty with resigned bewilderment. Though a part of her secretly wished for a return of the easy friendship she and Danny shared as children, another part of her wished Danny would just vanish.  And then, one night, he did.

First Line:  After my brother went missing, my parents let me use their car whenever I wanted, even though I only had a learner’s permit.

Review:  I read The Local News in one sitting, the gift of a cloudless afternoon at the cabin and a compelling, page-turning narrative that I just couldn’t put down – thank you, Miriam Gershow, for a thoroughly satisfying afternoon.

As usual, I had not read the plot synopsis before I began and for this I am grateful. I might not have agreed to read the novel if I had known the premise and its similarities to aspects of my past, both benign (growing up in Michigan, having taught adolescents for 15 years) and searing (having lost a brother almost ten years ago, witnessing a friend endure a very public tragedy with her daughter). But having had these shared experiences, I have a unique vantage point from which to experience this novel.

And, thus, I was so impressed with Gershow’s ability to express the ambivalence of sudden grief – from the nerveless shock to the heightened awareness of physical sensation to the endless sleepless nights and everpresent, buzzing adrenaline.

I am grateful that I did not read this even three or four years ago – I needed the distance of time to appreciate this novel and Gershow is so astute, that reading this with fresh grief might have been unendurable, despite the drastically different relationship I had with my brother.

Those with the misfortune of experiencing searing, sudden grief know the inaccuracy of the cliché that “time heals all wounds;” however, the resiliency of the human spirit and the distance of time does provide a buffer that is welcome and necessary.  The Local News allows us to witness how survivors are able to continue on, even while irreversibly marked.

While the narration occurs in the “present,” we are occasionally reminded from time-to-time that Danny actually disappeared ten years ago – which is a gift, actually.
It helps knowing that Lydia and her parents will survive this tragedy – at least on some level.

This novel is, on one level, an “issue novel” – focused primarily on the disappearance of a brother, son, high school star and how this affects the entire community, especially Lydia, the sister and our protagonist.

Lydia is so very likeable, so funny and smart, so tortured, and so 15.  Gershow creates the sensibility and struggles of a 15 year old so very perceptively that I knew – have known – Lydia many times over, even though she is such an individual in her own right.

One fear I had while reading this novel – and that I want to dispel for future readers – is that Gershow would be unable to provide closure satisfactorily. I do enjoy novels that focus on one issue but am rarely happy with the ending, because issue novels seem to all too often succumb to “made-for-t.v. movie” endings.

However, I should have known better – Lydia would never have allowed this to happen!  The ending is perfect for this novel, so have no fear if you decide to tackle this well-written, endlessly interesting novel.

Here’s a taste of Gershow’s prose.  I chose these two passages because they illustrate Gershow’s wonderful attention to the sense of smell, and how our senses somehow sharpen when our minds and hearts are dulled by grief:

“Our house had an uncomfortable stillness now, without Danny barking into the phone to friends or bounding up the stairs with such force it seemed as if he could bring the house down around him or dribbling a basketball against the vestibule tiles as Dad told him halfheartedly to knock it off.  And a smell. There was a smell now. It lingered, seemingly carried only on select air currents. For days it would appear to be gone, and then suddenly, when I sat down in the breakfast nook or stepped into the shower or wiped my feet on the doormat inside the sliding back doors, it would hit me just as strong, and I’d wonder if it’d been there all along and I’d just gotten used to it, like people who lived downwind of paper mills…” (20).

“Lola chomped on pungent strawberry gum, giving the air around us the smell of plug-in air freshner. She had a way of talking that didn’t leave room for the other person to say anything, which seemed to work out best for both of us.” (26)

If I have been appropriately convincing and you think you might enjoy this novel, please drop me a comment and I will choose a lucky winner shortly!

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