One of Amazon’s Best Books of December 2019Fans of Jodi Picoult and Fredrik Backman will fall for this “luminous” debut mystery following a young girl on a quest to save her family (Alan Bradley, New York Times–bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce mysteries)I know my brother is dead. But sometimes Mama gets confused.There’s plenty about the grownup world that six-year-old Aoife doesn’t … the grownup world that six-year-old Aoife doesn’t understand. Like what happened to her big brother Theo and why her mama is in the hospital instead of home where she belongs. Uncle Donny says she just needs to be patient, but Aoife’s sure her mama won’t be able to come home until Aoife learns what really happened to her brother. The trouble is no one wants to talk about Theo because he was murdered. But by whom?
With her imaginary friend Teddy by her side and the detecting skills of her nosy next-door neighbor, Aoife sets out to uncover the truth about her family. But as her search takes her from the banks of Theo’s secret hideout by the river to the rooftops overlooking Detroit, Aoife will learn that some secrets can’t stay hidden forever and sometimes the pain we bury is the biggest secret of them all.
Driven by Aoife’s childlike sincerity and colored by her vivid imagination, All That’s Bright and Gone illuminates the unshakeable bond between families—and the lengths we’ll go to bring our loved ones home.
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All That’s Bright and Gone by Eliza Nellums was released on December 10, 2019. This book deals with love, secrets, family, mental illness, and the potential of inheriting mental illness. Six-year-old Aoife navigates life agains the backdrop of major family predicaments. Her mother is institutionalized after nearly causing an automobile accident because she has a mental break while driving. Aoife’s older brother, Theo, is dead. Aoife tries to solve family secrets with the help of an imaginary bear names Teddy.
The tone throughout the story is childlike, told from Aoife’s point of view. yet astute. Her childlike innocence and concrete thoughts are evident even during family crises. At times, the vocabulary is at odds with that of the usual six year old’s range, i.e. a bit too sophisticated, but otherwise author Eliza Nellums captures a child’s voice, mental processes, and the concrete thoughts children are prone to, like Aoife believing her mother when Aoife is told she was found in a cabbage patch. The reader is fully engaged in Aoife’s point of view as Nellums pulls the reader into the world of this child while she searches for the truth about her dead brother. The ending is surprising, yet wholly believable.
I sat down with ALL THAT’S BRIGHT AND GONE at 7 pm on a Saturday night, and didn’t get up again until I’d turned the final page. Reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s ROOM, this book is just as poignant, but Eliza Nellums delivers a very clever twist. I can’t think of many mysteries that I’d describe as both thrilling and sweet, but this one fits the bill. Mystery lovers of all kinds will enjoy this wholly original novel.
A magical and poignant peek into the charmingly innocent mind of a little girl who makes her precarious way through a world filled with heartbreak, with the help of her trusty spirit guide–a lovable, invisible bear named Teddy.
Six-year-old Aoife and her mom set out for the mall, but never get there, as her mom suffers a nervous breakdown en route. Such is life for Aoife. Her mother is hospitalized and her Uncle Donny steps in to take care of her. Among the many things that Aoife wonders about is, when will her mother come home and what happened to her older brother Theo? She remembers him well but when she asks about him, her mother gets very upset and Uncle Donny is vague and evasive. There is no father in Aoife’s life, and she relies on prayer to her favorite saints to help her when life gets too difficult.
An exceptional book, written entirely from Aoife’s point of view. This book will grab you from the first page and you will likely think about it long after you’ve finished reading it. It is a sad but entertaining and delightful story, and you will love this bright, inquisitive little girl. Very strongly recommend.
Thank you very much to Netgalley, the author Eliza Nellums, and the publisher Crooked Lane Books for the free ARC I received for my honest review.
Great book
This was a very unusual but very engaging and interesting story – even if I didn’t always buy that it was being narrated by a six-year old… I have a six-year old. A VERY precocious, verbose, clever six-year old (if I may say so myself) with a sharp mind who seems years beyond her age much of the time. So I’m familiar with Aoife’s breed (and more than a little partial to it). Fortunately for us all, our story is NOTHING LIKE HERS – beyond the presence of the aforementioned six-year old. But even accepting that trauma can age a child, I struggled to keep reminding myself that the self-aware (and even in her childish misconceptions she was always that) narrator of this incredible tale was a child…
I can see where some readers may lose the story in that. I didn’t – and was surprised, because I usually don’t take to adult stories with child narrators because most authors have a difficult time finding the right tone or voice that balances the linguistic/observational skills of the child with the necessary revelatory requirements of the narrator. Nellums did the best job I’ve ever seen at walking that wire, and if it occasionally required me to forget Aoife’s age for the sake of the narration, it did so in a fairly seamless and non-disruptive fashion that deserves a lot of credit. But that’s not all she deserves a lot of credit for – she also deserves it for telling an original, engaging, entertaining tale that is about a child but also about the more fundamental need we all have to understand, to be loved, and to find our truth in the midst of the misunderstandings, protections, and secrets of those around us.
This is a lovely and heartbreaking story that genuinely surprised me at multiple turns. Aoife is a delight and the magical realism that edges her world was brilliant, offering just the right mix of magic and confusion and acceptance of whatever comes that is the hallmark of childhood. Nellums wrote a beautiful paean to family and love here, and she did it without preaching or sappiness or tropes. The story folded in on itself like origami, with each fold seeming a bit random but adding up to a marvelous “AHA!” at the end. I loved it and am definitely keeping Nellums on my watch list…
Thank you to NetGalley for my review copy.
All That’s Bright and Gone
by Eliza Nellums
What an interesting story unique in how it is told from 6 year old Aoifes view point. Aoife knows her brother The is dead, everybody knows this but she doesn’t understand what happened to him and she wants that mystery solved. With the help of her invisible friend Teddy (who she knows she isn’t supposed to be talking to) and her friend next door neighbor Hannah they begin to ask questions and find out what really happened to Theo all while trying to deal with her mom having a breakdown in the middle of the intersection of the mall and being taken to the hospital to be fixed so she is less confused. Excellent storyline and characters! Thank you Netgalley and the Publishers Crooked Lane for letting me read this and leave my honest opinion.
All That’s Bright and Gone is an absolutely enchanting book. Nellums tells the story of Aoife Scott’s family through her six-year-old eyes, making this refreshing and poignant book all the more original.
Aoife has a lot on her mind. Her mama has a hard time dealing with life, so Aoife does the best she can to take care of them both. She doesn’t have a Daddy, Mama said she found Aoife in a cabbage patch. Teddy, her invisible friend (who’s a bear), helps her a lot, but Mama doesn’t like it. She says it’s rude to talk to people that other’s can’t see. That’s why Aoife is so surprised and scared that day in the car, when Mama starts screaming and crying at Theo, Aoife’s dead brother. She ran the car right into the middle of the street and stopped! Why they could’ve been killed! All the cars were honking their horns, and then got real quiet when Mama stepped out of the car, still screaming and crying. Soon the police came and took her to a hospital, just until she stops being so confused the doctor’s say, but Aoife is afraid she’ll never come back. Like when Theo never came back.
Uncle Donny comes to stay with Aoife and he’s really nice, but it’s not the same as if Mama were home. If only Aoife can solve the mystery of who killed her brother, then their family will be together again. That is her quest. She must be brave, like Saint Joan of Arc, and figure it out. Then things will be okay again.
Nellums does an excellent job of presenting the world of a troubled young girl and her dysfunctional family through a six-year old’s eyes. It is captivating, endearing, sad, and victorious in equal measures.
I urge you not to miss this impressive read. I finished the book last night, and already I miss Aoife. She’s a little girl who makes an impression on your heart.
“…this family, we may fall down sometimes, but we can always get back up. We are clever and brave and strong. We can get through anything.” (From the author’s fingers to God’s ears. Save and protect our precious children!)
My thanks to NetGalley, the author and Crooked Lane Books for allowing me to read All That’s Bright and Gone in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are my own.
This book is definitely something else and not what you expect but a great story nevertheless .
Told in a point of view of a 6 years old little girl, we discover a lot of things happening and how she sees everything around her. Living with mental health illness around her and trying to understand what’s happening is hard for an adult so imagine being a kid with big dreams and an imagination that knows no limits.
It might break your heart at times, there are some questions that we get the answers but also there are others that are left opened up for the reader to review them and that in my opinion is a great story overall and the author has done a great job of it.
What a fantastic read!! It took me totally by surprise; when I read the blurb, I thought it was going to be about a six year old coping with her brother’s death. It turned out to be so much more than that! I loved this story, I thought the author did a wonderful job at not only keeping me hooked from start to finish, but writing from a 6 year old’s point of view. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to write a novel about such a heavy subject from a child’s point of view. But I thought it was done very well, it seemed very real and made the story all the more interesting. Aoife does not understand the magnitude of the things & conversations happening around her and the reader is left to read in between the lines and piece things together, which made me feel very much apart of the story.
The characters were great, the writing was great, the plot was full of twists and turns; this book is going straight to my favorites shelf!
All That’s Bright and Gone by Eliza Nellums a four-star read that will shine brightly. This was a great story and such a great way of narrating the story from the perspective of six year old Aofie who is adorable in her own right, at least over her name she is, she is this little creature who wants to get to the bottom of things that a girl her age just shouldn’t know. The details are good, but at times do go a bit far and into too much detail, but if you like thrillers that will keep you guessing you will enjoy this.