Brookhouse elegantly portrays his characters' mating rituals, still uncertain although they're in their middle years. Landon and his tentative girlfriend Hannah go to a clothing optional beach and exchange coy words: "Is this going to be awkward? she asks. I mean, you have a choice…How much I want to see or how much I want to show?" But Hannah also muses about widows who "tolerate sex to make the loneliness to go away." Still, some literary conceits—a near-total use of the present tense and omission of all quotation marks—at times make keeping up a challenge.
The characters, too, aren’t always caught up in the plot, so lost in their thoughts that what happens in their here and now can seem to them secondary. Landon and Sam secretly bury a skeleton on an old estate in an ill-conceived attempt to save it, but that barely seems to make an impression on them. However, when Landon sees a mural that may save the house anyway, he becomes lost in the "leafy tongues and sinewy vines and the floral qualities in the figures.” In the end everyone is back in the bar, perhaps, like the reader, a little wiser for their reveries and misadventures.
Takeaway: These wryly reflective Floridian retirees, with their longings and regrets, will remain with readers.
Great for fans of: William Trevor’s The Old Boys, Deborah Moggach’s These Foolish Things.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B+
Marketing copy: A-
