The Blue Window
From the Orange Prize–winning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood comes a riveting novel about a therapist whose attempts to unlock the most difficult cases of her life—those of her son, and of her mother—reveal that the bigger the secret you’re concealing, the more it conceals you.
Anyone who has ever had trouble persuading a teenager or an elderly parent to “open up” will recognize Lorna’s dilemma during the three days she finds herself alone in a remote lakeside cottage with her mutely miserable son and her impenetrable mother. Despite her training as a clinical social worker, and her arsenal of therapeutic techniques, she’s resisted at every turn as she tries to understand what’s made the two people most important to her go silent.
Though silence has always marked Lorna’s family. Her father was deaf. Her mother, Marika,
abandoned Lorna and her brother when they were children. No explanation was ever offered. Nor why Marika resurfaced eighteen years ago to invite Lorna and her infant son, Adam, to Vermont for a strained reunion. A relationship, of sorts, has followed—an annual Thanksgiving visit, during which Marika sits taciturnly among the guests at Lorna’s table, agreeing only to “be seen to exist.”
But now it’s Adam who won’t talk. Home from college and suffering over something he won᾿t disclose, he’s so depressed that he refers to himself as “A” for “Anti-Matter.” So, when she’s summoned to Vermont because Marika has had a fall, Lorna sees an opportunity to get Adam out of the house and maybe also a chance to finally connect with her mother. What she never anticipated was that grandson and grandmother would form a bond, and leave her out of it.
How do you care for people you can’t understand, and who don’t want to be understood?
Suspenseful, poignantly funny, and beautifully incisive, The Blue Window explores the ways people misperceive each other, and how secrets and silence, wielded and guarded, exert their power over families—and what luminous, frightening, and tender possibilities might come forth, once those secrets are challenged.
Praise for The Blue Window
“As amusing as it is poignant….Berne is good at getting people’s subtle shifts of mood and understanding, and especially good at grounding these moments in sharply observed details….The tension between the immediate and the imagined or remembered is what makes this novel work, with Berne striking a satisfying balance between what happens, what it might mean, and what’s needed to go on. The past may be past, but its significance has yet to be determined. The possibilities are endless.” —The Washington Post
"Sharply witty, deeply raw and impeccably written, Suzanne Berne's latest novel delves into family estrangement and attempted reconciliation…Berne effortlessly switches from one point of view to another [and] finds the right words every time…[Her] prose explores familial bonds with deep feeling but without sentimentality, and her portraits of marriage are astonishingly good…The descriptions of Lake Champlain, numerous and vivid...act as breaths of fresh air for the reader… The past, of course, infuses every word that this family says (or doesn't), and every decision they make in this carefully crafted, complex novel.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Berne builds suspense with a slow reveal of the long-hidden secrets at the root of three generations of shame and lost opportunities...compelling…an engaging exploration of how trauma can leave its mark in unexpected ways.” — Booklist
“[A]n engrossing story of family secrets involving a woman’s estranged mother and her troubled son…With chapters that alternate between points in time and Lorna, Adam, and Marika’s perspectives, the author expertly shows how secrets fester and affect the family, especially as Adam’s allegiances bend toward Marika…Berne’s strong prose carries the day, particularly her descriptions of Vermont’s natural beauty…a satisfying family drama.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“When I step back to consider the general appeal of a book, I look the four gateways...plot, setting, character and language. The Blue Window succeeds in all.... By pulling what happened in the past to what’s happening in the present, Berne creates an active plot that builds each character in a way that makes perfect sense. And her language is lovely.” — Pat Leach, host of All About Books, Nebraska Public Radio
“[A] psychologically insightful portrait of family dynamics.” — Kirkus
“The Blue Window is a probing, deeply absorbing examination of personal and family secrets, and the sneaky ways that trauma can reverberate through multiple generations. Suzanne Berne is an elegant, psychologically astute novelist whose insights are illuminated by sly flashes of humor.”—Tom Perrotta, Author of Election and Tracy Flick Can't Win
The Dogs of Littlefield
A “brilliantly done” (Sunday Times, London) comedy of manners that explores the unease behind the manicured lawns of suburban America from the Orange Prize–winning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood.
Littlefield, Massachusetts, named one of the Ten Best Places to Live in America, full of psychologists and college professors, is proud of its fine schools, its girls’ soccer teams, its leafy streets, and charming village center.
Yet no sooner has sociologist Dr. Clarice Watkins arrived to study the elements of “good quality of life” than someone begins poisoning the town’s dogs. Are the poisonings in protest to an off-leash proposal for Baldwin Park—the subject of much town debate—or the sign of a far deeper disorder? Certainly these types of things don’t happen in Littlefield.
With an element of suspense, satirical social commentary, and in-depth character portraits, Suzanne Berne’s nuanced novel reveals the discontent concealed behind the manicured lawns and picket fences of darkest suburbia. The Dogs of Littlefield is “a compelling, poignant yet unsentimental novel that examines life, love, and loss” (Sunday Mirror, UK).
Praise for The Dogs of Littlefield
“The writing couldn’t be better or smarter…The canine murders, all told, are a way in, a comedy of manners with a dabbling in whodunnit…What a good job Berne has done, making the grandiose funny.” –The Washington Post
“Like John Updike, Evan Connell, Jane Gardam, and other masters of understatement, Berne draws us into the everyday life of an unremarkable place yet maintains an ironic perspective, her keen eye and her laconic wit missing nothing and sparing nobody.” –The Boston Globe
“Berne (Missing Lucile, 2010, etc.), who won the Orange Prize for her first novel, A Crime in the Neighborhood (1997), is a sure hand at the dinner parties, school concerts, teacup tempests, and true moments of suspense that make a suburban comedy of manners par excellence. It’s too bad about the dogs, but they died for a good cause.” – Kirkus (Starred Review)
“A look at suburban life that manages to be both scathing and sympathetic, Berne’s latest is a smart, amusing satire.” – Booklist
“Berne has done it again with her latest insightful, character-driven, novel set in modern suburbia…[a] thoughtful satire filled with unforgettable characters.” – Publishers Weekly
The Ghost at the Table
Strikingly different since childhood and leading dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have managed to remain "devoted"--as long as they stay on opposite coasts. When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include the sisters' long-estranged father. Cynthia, however, doesn't understand how Frances can ignore the past their father's presence revives, a past that includes suspicions about their mother's death twenty-five years earlier.
As Thanksgiving Day arrives, with a houseful of guests looking forward to dinner, the sisters continue to struggle with different versions of a shared past, their conflict escalating to a dramatic, suspenseful climax.
Praise for The Ghost at the Table
A “complex emotional minuet, [in which] no one is blameless. . . . Fixing on [sisters] Cynthia and Frances with ferocious focus and narrative drive, Berne lets that gate swing wide open.”—Elle
“A great read…Berne cooks up a literary feast. Her tactile descriptions and enigmatic characters saturate the story and provide a filling repast…This substantial tale of a dysfunctional family reunion promises a holiday, and a read, to remember.”—Kirkus, starred review
“A taut psychological drama . . . . Berne takes an inherently dramatic conflict . . . and ratchets up the stakes with astute observation and narrative cunning.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Suzanne Berne’s novel is perfect reading as you head off to your family’s Thanksgiving celebration. Perfect if you like compelling characters, acerbic insights and a gimlet-eyed look at the intense bonds between siblings.”—USA Today
“Sisterly relationships are the driving force in this novel. Berne shows through several generations of this family as well as through the daughters of Mark Twain in an interesting allegorical touch, the psychological interaction of sisters and the roles they assume throughout life.”—Denver Post
“Berne plumbs the rich possibilities of a few juicy literary ingredients: a snowy Thanksgiving weekend, a creaky old Concord colonial, and two semi-estranged sisters with opposing versions of childhood events–including the details of their mother’s death. The Ghost at the Table stirs this all up, adds a fine cast of supporting characters, and throws in the twist of an increasingly unreliable narrator. . . . Berne has a talent for wreaking havoc in the midst of utter domesticity.” —Boston Phoenix
A Crime in the Neighborhood
An auspicious debut novel by a young writer who will remind readers of Anne Lamott and Anne Tyler.
Crime in the Neighborhood centers on a headline event-- the molestation and murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a Washington, D.C., suburb. At the time of the murder, 1973, Marsha was nine years old and as an adult she still remembers that summer as a time when murder and her own family's upheaval were intertwined. Everyone, it seemed to Marsha at the time, was committing crimes. Her father deserted his family to take up with her mother's younger sister. Her teenage brother and sister were smoking and shoplifting, and her mother was "flirting" with Mr. Green, the new next-door neighbor. Even the president of the United States seemed to be a crook. But it is Marsha's own suspicions about who committed this crime that has the town up in arms and reveals what happens when fear runs wild.
Praise for A Crime in the Neighborhood
“Right away you learn that writer Suzanne Berne establishes tone and theme in an impressive and deceptively simple way. . . . You know her story and her style are going to be worth your time and hers-and you are hooked. . . . The telling is as exciting and as elegant as the story being told.”—USA Today
“Captivating. . . . A Crime in the Neighborhood is an elegantly told story, possessing enough psychic energy to take a few awful occurrences and weave from them a tapestry of memory and longing.”—Boston Globe
“[A] very marvelous story. . . . Berne has crafted a child’s disillusionment that mirrors a greater disaffection.”—Newsday
“First-time novelist Suzanne Berne has crafted a compelling narrator who recounts her younger self with lucidity and compassion.” —US Magazine
“A richly textured novel in which a child’s murder rocks a once-peaceful neighborhood.” —Redbook
“To read Suzanne Berne’s disturbing first novel is to enter a world of stifling boredom and barely suppressed cruelty, to move beyond the middle-class ennui of Cheever and Updike and closer to the twisted pathology of David Lynch. . . . Berne is at her best when she explores the darkness lurking in all of us, when she draws us in and makes us feel complicitous.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune
A Perfect Arrangement
Handsome and ambitious, Mirella and Howard Cook-Goldman have it all-two precious children, dual careers, a great old colonial house on Massachusetts's North Shore, a golden retriever. The only thing they lack is reliable child care.
Enter Randi Gill, sent by Family Options, Ltd., an agency specializing in Midwestern girls with teaching aspirations ("Could you be Comfortable with Anything but the Best for Your Family?. . . Guaranteed Nationwide FBI Criminal Fingerprinting and Background Checks."). Randi's references are perfect. She's perfect. She cleans, cooks, sews, and makes her own Play-Doh. The children love her . . . almost too much.
Though it's hard for Mirella to watch Randi succeed with the children where she has failed, she can't deny the peace and order Randi has brought to the household. But perfection is a tough act to maintain, and soon enough, there are ruptures. When events force Mirella and Howard to reveal the secrets they've been hiding from each other, the family cataclysm catapults the nanny (who has secrets of her own) into a position of unnatural control.
Praise for A Perfect Arrangement
“Haunting. . . . Takes you deep into perhaps the least-traveled territory of all: the complex motives behind everyday human behavior.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“The situations [Berne] creates are so compelling, and so disturbingly family, that it’s hard not [to] be drawn in when everyone’s secrets begin to unravel.”—Boston Globe
Berne “nails the messy domesticity that resides where Martha Stewart fears to tread. But this thought-provoking tale concludes that for all its drains, strains and heartaches, [it’s] a world worth loving.” —People
“I couldn’t put this book down. . . . A Perfect Arrangement does offer a sensitive, finely wrought portrayal of modern family life that readers might find both oddly comforting and compelling.”—Raleigh News & Observer
“A wonderfully crafted novel, each detail is in place, and the small moments of these characters’ lives are captured with clarity and thoughtfulness.”—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Missing Lucile
Even as a child, Suzanne Berne understood the source of her father’s terrible melancholy: he’d lost his mother when he was a little boy. Decades later, with her father now elderly and ailing, she decides to try to uncover the woman who continues to haunt him.
Every family has a missing person, someone who died young or disappeared, leaving a legacy of loss. Aided by vintage photographs and a box of old keepsakes, Berne sets out to fill in her grandmother’s silhouette and along the way uncovers her own foothold in American history.
Lucile Berne, née Kroger, was a daughter of Bernard Henry Kroger, the archetypal American self-made man, who at twenty-three established what is today’s $76 billion grocery enterprise. From her turn-of-the-century Cincinnati childhood to her college years at Wellesley, her tenure as treasurer of her father’s huge company, her stint as a relief worker in devastated France, her marriage to a professional singer, and the elusive, unhappy wealthy young matron she became, Lucile both illustrates and contradicts her times.
In the process of creating this portrait, Berne discovers the function of family history: “to explain what is essentially inexplicable―how we came to be ourselves.”
Praise for Missing Lucile
[Berne] writes with polish and insight... With this biography, the author tenders a well-turned portrait...A lyrical character sketch, vivid even through the smoky glass of time.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Applying exceptional intelligence and a novelist’s imagination to ‘snips of historical DNA,’ Suzanne Berne finds that Lucile has been waiting for her, all along, at the intersection of history and private heartbreak.” —THOMAS MALLON, author of Henry and Clara and Fellow Travelers
“Suzanne Berne achieves a nuanced and cunning portrait of the grandmother she never met. Exacting in her reportage, responsible about the limits of knowing, she also uses supposition and surmise to great lyric effect. This is forensics as a gesture of love: a life dreamed forth from the smallest trove of clues.” —SVEN BIRKERTS, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again and The Gutenberg Elegies
“Suzanne Berne intuits her way into her grandmother’s life, creating a story and at the same time reminding us that all storytelling involves a delicate piecing together of fact and rich imagination. A beautiful and subtle piece of writing.” —JOAN WICKERSHAM, author of The Suicide Index and The News from Spain