Play Book Tag discussion

Ask Again, Yes – Mary Beth Keane
Digital audiobook performed by Molly Pope.
5*****

This is the kind of character-driven literary fiction that I absolutely love. Keane focuses this decades-long story on two families living in a suburb of New York City. Francis Gleason and Brian Stanhope are two rookie cops on the NYPD when they meet. They settle with their wives and young children in homes across the street from one another. But Brian’s wife Anne is unstable, and Francis’s wife Lena cannot understand why her offers of friendship are turned away. When their children become friends (and more than friends as they enter their teenage years), the stage is set for strife and heartache.

There is so much going on here. Family expectations. Alcoholism. Denial. Mental Illness. Betrayal. Forgiveness. Love.

By the end of the novel I felt that I really knew these people. I cheered for them. Was dismayed by them. Worried about them. Forgave them.

Molly Pope does a stupendous job of performing the audiobook. I particularly liked how she interpreted Anna Stanhope and Kate Gleeson, though she was equally effective in voicing the male characters.



LINK to my review

Great review. I like how you put it... Cheered for them, dismayed by them, etc. This is such a powerful book. I still think about the characters as though they were people I knew in real life. Forgiveness is hard.