Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane – 400 pages

Book Blurb:

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. 

My Review: 4.5 stars

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Ask Again, Yes is an emotionally raw story about family, friendship, love and forgiveness. Sounds pretty basic, right?  I promise, you’ve never read anything like this before. Keane takes you on a journey into the lives of two neighboring families, both working class New Yorkers. This work of literary fiction will keep you glued to the pages as the story unfolds. It’s told with nuance, insight and a sense of familiarity, as if she’s known these people forever and is telling their story.

The characters in the book are multi-faceted and well-drawn, which allows the characters to come to life. Their stories are complicated and the relationships between the two families are tricky. After a horrific incident, well, crime, things get even dicier. This event starts a ripple effect and we follow its traction over four decades.

This book has a lot of disturbing topics mixed in such as mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, adultery and abandonment. Thankfully the author knew to pepper in hope, love, forgiveness and finding your own peace to keep the book in balance. Interestingly, I’ve had many readers ask me about the title. Some find it blasé or forgetful, while others attach a lot of inherent meaning to it. Just that question alone could keep a book club chatting. I highly recommend this book. I’m ready to read Keane’s earlier works now.

Quotes I liked:

They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room…”

“The thing is, Peter, grown-ups don’t know what they’re doing any better than kids do. That’s the truth.”