Ask Again, Yes: A Novel
Ask Again, Yes has been getting a lot of buzz and rave reviews--for good reason. It's an excellent book, that follows two neighbor families over decades. While the adults are not close, children Kate and Peter are. They forge a friendship in childhood, but a violent event rips the families apart and has repercussions long afterward. Kate and Peter, however, never forget one another and reunite as adults. Time, distance, and adulthood sometimes brings new perspectives on past events--and sometimes they don't and those events are dealt with in other ways.
While this was an excellently rendered book, I found it quite a difficult read. The challenges the characters face are tough, and unrelenting. When you're ready for a heavy, character-driven novel, this is a good choice--but save it for later if you're seeking light summer reads.
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Publisher’s Description
A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, and the power of forgiveness.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city. What goes on behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.
Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart. In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.
But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past. Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.
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