A Seahorse Year

author
Stacey D'Erasmo

plot synopsis in 50 words or fewer
Set in contemporary San Francisco, this story revolves around a quintessentially modern family--two moms and a gay man, whose partner has died of AIDS--whose lives are altered suddenly when Christopher, the adolesecent son of Nan, Marina, and Hal, has a breakdown .

what really matters
D'Erasmo's writing is clear, precise, and exquisite. Through it, she creates a tightly wound cast of characters whose lives open up, layer by layer, to reveal the complex, heart-breaking, and redemptive ways that we attempt to love one another.

what i thought
What stays with you, long after you've finished reading this book, are the characters--more specifically, their emotional complexity. D'Erasmo casts an unflinching look at the things we do out of love and need; as a result her characters take on dimensions equal to actual people in our own lives. We watch, almost helplessly, as Nan, Marina, Hal, Christopher, and Tamara, Chris's girlfriend, stuble through the clumsy, minute motions of sustaining love for one another. We bear witness as the limits of what they can endure are rubbed up against, time and time again.

"Nan doesn't ask Marina what she might have to be sorry about. The unsaid words are what they have, in a way--a slender sequence of them, thier value lying precisely in their not being spoken. Marina's mother and father stayed together the same way, wrapped round and round each other with invisible thread. Everyone was just too tired to keep fighting. Sitting in the garden, Nan resting so docilely wih her in the grass, Marina sees a king of grace there, where before she had seen only deceit. What is love but a series of small decisions made under impossible circumstances? One by one, they add up to years."

The psychological and emotional tension created and sustained beautifully over the course of the book make reading A Seahorse Year feel like reading a thriller: you can't stop, nor can you get rid of the knot in your stomach. The toughness, the intricacies, and the utter gorgeouness of life are flushed out through the lives of one family over the course of one year. D'Erasmo never disappoints, and as a result, the reader never forgets.

who else loved this book (or at least, say they did)
Norman Rush ("In A Seahorse Year, what might fairly be called an experiment in parenthood is carried out by a lesbian couple and a gay man. These three, and the son they all love, are sharply drawn; the hazzards they collectively face are harrowingly shown; and the route taken toward a livable solution is narrated with economy and drive.")

Mark Doty ("Stacey D'Erasmo's prose pulses with just how it feels to live now; she has an astonishing feel for the texture of contemporary life. Her new novel is a s superb, unfaltering examination of the riches and struggles of the families we choose and the ones we're given, the ways love forces us to face both the power we hold over others and all the ways we're helpless. Readers will live with these beautifully drawn charachters long after the last page has been turned.")

Francisco Goldman ("You think it's going to be just a wonderful read, and then Stacey D'Erasmo clobbers you with one of the most profound, heart-wrenching, and resonant stories I've read in years. A Seahorse Year is a great contemporary novel.")

other things this author has written
Tea