Book – Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O’Nan (2002) – Following the death of the family patriarch,  the Maxwells must face the major changes coming in their lives.  Henry had been the center for them all and now they have no choice to but interact.  Three generations journey to  Lake Chautauqua for one final summer week at the family cottage.

Stewart O’Nan may be the best American novelist you have never heard of.  I read the book that followed this one first (Emily Alone) just last year.  It was recommended to me as fine writing that centered in Pittsburgh with a touch of Chautauqua.  This one reverses the locations with the vast majority around Chautauqua Lake.  Having grown up near Pittsburgh and lived Chautauqua County for almost thirty years, the locations are very familiar.  It’s obvious that O’Nan has spent some time there because he has picked up the kind of details that come from some familiarity.  I was a little troubled by his depiction of the communities around the lake.  They border on the grim at times and don’t really match my memories of that time and place.  It was only later in the book that it dawned on me that I was seeing the place through the eyes of the Maxwells, a family that seems to relish their family squabbles and negative world view.

That doesn’t sound like much of an endorsement of the book, but once again O’Nan has taken the mundane routines of life and created something magical.  These are flawed, broken people trying to find a way forward through a lifetime of familial angst that they don’t have the ability to express.  They know they’re broken, they know that something needs to be spoken.  But they don’t know what it is and have no idea how to say it if they did.

We meet these characters again in the second book.  They have grown some (the grandchildren especially) but will still be struggling with what began so many years ago and isn’t not resolved at the cottage on the lake.  Thes Maxwells are ordinary people with ordinary issues.  There is no high drama in their lives.  They are faced with the questions of old age and middle age and the age when children become adolescents.  The storytelling point of view moves between them, giving a 360-degree view of what has happened and is happening.

“Wish You Were Here” isn’t a life written like a book but a book written like life.

Rating- **** Recommended