Idaho: Roman (origineel 2017; editie 2018)

I'm very glad the Morning News Tournament of Books included this on their shortlist in order for me to read it sooner. I possibly wouldn't have been aware of it at all. Sadly, 'Idaho' was also matched up in the first round against another of my favorite books about Alzheimer's and caregiving:'Goodbye, Vitamin' by Rachel Khong. I'm glad I wasn't the judge for that! A book with shifting perspectives, some for only a few pages, but each perspective spot on. Usually very sad but the imagery is lovely. Each word seems perfectly placed, polished, refined. Each chapter is like a jewel in a necklace, but in the end, some of these jewels aren't quite fitting with the others. There were a couple mysteries I was reading towards seeing solved. Answers aren't exactly there. But that's life. Sometimes there aren't answers. BUT this also isn't life, this is a story. However, Emily Ruskovich is amazing at images and these images will stay with me and I will go wherever Ruskovich wants me to go. I hope another book is on the way! ( )

This book starts well and grabs your attention, not with a whodunit but a howdunit and whodunit. However after the first half it wavers and goes off in tangents that I'm not sure are germane to the book. It could have been shorter and therefore may have been better. ( )

Una família, viu a la muntanya amb dues filles i la mare mata a una d'elles i l'altre desapareix. La novel.la ens explica la situació en varies etapes, la de la parella anterior al fet, la de la presó de la dona i també la de la nova parella amb els seus sentiments ( )

3.5/5stars

This novel of sadness and isolation still holds great appeal. Told from the perspectives of Jenny, a mother who for seemingly no reason kills her younger daughter, and Ann, piano teacher and second wife to Wade, the father of that girl, the solitary lives on an Idaho mountain and in prison run in parallel. Switching time frames from the murder in 1975 through Jenny’s release from prison in 2025, there are many mysteries here, but not about the inherent goodness of Wade, who is facing his own mortality in the form of early onset dementia. Tragedy abounds. Jenny's motive for taking May’s life remains cloudy, and the disappearance of June, the elder sister who ran away into the woods in the aftermath of her sister May’s death, is a constant festering wound for Ann and Wade. Side characters, like the sketch artist who draws aging portraits of June; Eliot, the object of Jenny’s crush, who loses a leg in an accident; Elizabeth, Jenny’s cellmate, and their devotion to each other; and even Wade’s dogs, all add to the melancholy. ( )