The triumphant New York Times Bestseller * The Tonight Show Summer Reads Pick * Named one of the best books of the year by People, Vogue, Parade, NPR, and Elle “This is one beautiful book. I was wowed by Keane’s writing and narrative skill–and by what she knows about trouble.” –Stephen King How much can a family forgive? Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in …
How much can a family forgive?
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens 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 explosive events to come.
In Mary Beth Keane’s extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.
more
I love books that track characters over huge portions of their lives. Partially because I think as a reader I can learn a lot from one character’s development, and partially because I’m always impressed when an author can do it well. And I have to imagine there’s a fine line between maintaining enough consistency to make sure the character at 40 is plausible based on the character we saw at 12, while still depicting their growth and change. Anyways, I though Keane did a great job at this. Her central characters of Peter & Kate felt entirely real to me at all stages of their lives.
I also think Keane did a great job of setting up the story so it matched the growth of Kate and Peter. In the beginning of the book, when they’re young, the characters around them seem purely good or purely bad, as most people/things do when we’re younger. But as they grow up we get to see things get muddier — Peter’s mom isn’t the one dimensional human she first appears to be. Kate’s Dad isn’t consistently charismatic and moral. Kate and Peter themselves struggle to reconcile gray areas, both in themselves and one another. In this way, it felt like real life.
So if you enjoy character-driven novels and/or family sagas, Ask Again, Yes is for you!
Ask Again, Yes is a powerful and moving novel of family, trauma, and the defining moments in people’s lives. Mary Beth Keane is a writer of extraordinary depth, feeling and wit. Readers will love this book, as I did.
Ask Again, Yes is an engrossing story filled with so much family drama that it shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does. There is alcoholism, mental illness, and so much dysfunction, but that isn’t what makes this book such a good read.
What makes this book so difficult to put down is the compassion, forgiveness and caring that fills the entire story. These are characters that experience a lot, but they do forgive and move on. It takes a while and there is angst and drama, but they get there. There are quite a few life lessons in here….if people listen.
Check out Ask Again, yes. You will not be disappointed.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an ARC at my request. My thoughts in this review are my own and freely given.
Mary Beth Keane takes on one of the most difficult problems in fiction—how to write about human decency. In Ask Again, Yes, Keane creates a layered emotional truth that makes a compelling case for compassion over blame, understanding over grudge, and the resilience of hearts that can accept the contradictions of love.
Mary Beth Keane combines Joan Didion’s exacting eye for detail with the emotional wallop of Alice McDermott. From the ache of first love to the recognition that the people closest to us are flawed and human, Ask Again, Yes is a moving testament to the necessary act of forgiveness. It is heartbreaking, hopeful, and honest.
Family dysfunction is a common topic in a lot of novels, and the way that Mary Beth Keane handles the issue in the plot of ASK AGAIN, YES is heart-wrenching, original, and thoughtful–Irish cops, who are neighbors, become tangled through the relationship of their children, and the story takes the reader down a long dark tunnel of years. A shooting. A tearing apart with the all-to-familiar trip to the bottle. Keane’s writing is intimate and rambling, and this is a good read. One that makes you think.
I did it again – bought a book, ASK AGAIN, YES, based purely on hype. This time, I wasn’t disappointed.
ASK AGAIN, YES chronicles forty-plus years in the lives of two families. Both have Irish roots, husbands in the NYPD, and the germs of ill will between them, but what ultimately ties them together is love between the daughter of one and the son of the other, childhood playmates who evolve into much, much more.
This character-based plot is complex, with varying points of view and shifting voices as the years progress, but the author’s insight is deep and her writing evocative enough to pull it off with aplomb. Issues here include alcoholism and mental illness. Days after I’ve finished reading ASK AGAIN, YES, though, what haunts me is the toll that early trauma can take on later life. The author doesn’t lecture; she simply tells her story.
And tells it. And tells it. This is a long book. I have no trouble with long books. I simply felt that this one went into detail about some characters in whom we aren’t really invested, and fails to do so about some that we are. This makes for a bit more telling than doing if you know what I mean.
That said, ASK AGAIN, YES us an intelligent, well-written, totally worthwhile read. For me, bottom line? It is about working with what life brings and overcoming adversity. It’s about forgiveness. It’s about deep, true love.
And that, fellow reader, is uplifting.
Mary Beth Keane is at the height of her powers in this novel about the sacrifices we make when we choose to build a life with someone. In Ask Again Yes, Keane tells a story about the fragility of happiness, the violence lurking beneath everyday life, and, ultimately, the power of love. If you’ve ever loved someone beyond reason, you will love this wise, tender, and beautiful book.
I loved how Mary Beth gave us insight into each of these flawed characters. What a story. So much heartache all the way around, but the way in which she handled forgiveness was just beautiful. If more of us saw the world through various shades of gray (and not black and white), we’d be a lot healthier and happier as a society.
A beautifully written novel about two families who are next door neighbors in a small town outside NYC. Both fathers are policemen; but otherwise the families are very different. This book touches on mental illness, alcoholism, denial, dysfunction, young (clueless) love, mature love, parenthood, aging, and forgiveness. I read this immediately after Ann Patchett’s THE DUTCH HOUSE and found similarities in themes and tone, in the shifts between scenes and synopsis (the books both cover decades), and the wonderful quality of writing. These are not plot-driven page-turners. They are nuanced explorations of how individuals and families evolve and get stuck, err and atone. As usual, I like to share a few lines that suggest the quality of writing: “They were apart long enough to know the shape of each other’s absence.” “Francis smiled but there was no light in it.” And my favorite (maybe because it expresses the theme of how memories change, which is at the core of my own most recent novel) “They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that’s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.” Recommended for fans of Ann Patchett, Celeste Ng, and Anne Tyler.
This book is magnificent. If you come anywhere near me I will be unable to stop talking about why you MUST read it.
This book was a sprawling family drama and I loved every second of it. First, the author’s style is somehow both descriptive and concise. (This happens to be my favorite style of writing when it comes to literary fiction.) Second, this book was not a “happy” book, but it was also not a book that makes you want to give up on humanity like a lot of “not happy” books do. It was simply a “real” book. Granted, the situation that the characters ended up in was definitely out of the ordinary, but nobody escapes this life without scars and we all carry them into our relationships with our family. The scars in this book are made visible. However, the deep love and commitment that comes with family is also covered. There is pain and suffering, but there is also love and healing. It isn’t perfect. But… maybe it kinda is.
I struggled with this one. It’s not my usual flavor so I read it slowly, not knowing what to expect. It glided along at somewhat a tedious pace. I kept waiting, and waiting, and yawning, and waiting for something big and pivotal to happen but it never did. There was no charisma, no “wow, I can’t believe that really happened.” This is a story of a family, it could be anyone’s story, but I don’t understand what made it unique enough to be a full book. The characters were hard to keep straight at times and were quite bland, and the nonlinear information was mingled in with current situations which made it hard to follow. I was mostly bored, mostly just wanting it to be over, feeling agonizingly tortured. I’m stuck in between 1 and 2 stars, but giving 2 stars because I did not passionately hate it, I was simply bored enough to fall asleep.
Thank you to netgalley for approving me for a copy to review.
I devoured this astonishing tale of two families linked by chance, love, and tragedy. Mary Beth Keane gives us characters so complex and alive that I find myself still thinking of them days after turning the final page. A must-read.
Mary Beth Keane looks past the veneer that covers ordinary moments and into the very heart of real life. There’s a Tolstoyan gravity, insight, and moral heft in these pages, and Keane’s ability to plumb the depths of authentic feeling while avoiding sentimentality leaves one shaking one’s head in frank admiration. This wonderful book is so many things: a gripping family drama; a sensitive meditation on mental illness; a referendum on the power and cost of loyalty; a ripping yarn that takes us down into the depths and back up; in short, a triumph.
ASK AGAIN, YES MARY BETH KEANE 5 stars
This is one of those books that, as I pondered writing this review, I have changed my rating from a 4 to a 5. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how incredibly strong the characters in this book are, I finished it last week and I’m still thinking about them., all of them. If you love strong character driven books, you will love this one! I had a bit of believability issues with one of the main characters but it doesn’t take away from the entire body of work.
From the blurb you know that this novel is about two neighboring families, both husbands are policemen who started out as rookies on the NYPD force. The book is told from several points of view which I think greatly improved my understanding of how the individuals felt and acted.
Francis Gleeson has had a great career, he is strong willed, intelligent, diligent and yet with his family he has an incredible soft touch. He is the first to move to this new suburb, he, his wife and two daughters are doing well individually and as a family, although Lena is at times lonely and would like a larger life outside the home.
Within months Brian and Anne move in next door to the Gleeson’s. Brian and Francis are not close friends at this point, but they are friendly. Anne is quite a different matter, she does not go out of her way to befriend the Gleesons and keeps to her house much of the time. Later, both Anne and Lena have children only six months apart, Peter and Kate, who are immediately bonded to each other even as little friends. Their story will play a huge part in the novel.
A terrible incident occurs which changes the lives of everyone in both families, it is tragic, horrific and probably could have been avoided. The Stanhopes are forced to move away. I would not spoil this novel for anyone by giving away anything more.
This is a book that I couldn’t wait to get back to and finished in two days. This story hits all the emotional buttons, happiness, extreme sadness, frustration, hope, love and forgiveness. We are taken through the lives of these families who handle the tragedy in very different ways. The plot flows very well and is extremely well thought out. We really get to know these people, this is the first book this year that has touched me in this way.
Buy the book, read it, ponder what you would do in this situation and you won’t be disappointed.
As an afterthought, I did read The Walking People, by this author many years ago and it was excellent, so if you enjoy this one, go back and read the other.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.
4.25
An intense drama, this centers around two families over decades of their lives…how they meet, mesh, clash and ultimately merge. There’s mental illness, alcoholism, and an especially violent episode as seen through multiple characters from each family.
I’ll be honest, while I felt this was an excellent read, I sometimes felt bogged down by the moments of darkness and despair the characters had to work through to come out whole. So while only 400 pgs., it really felt much longer to me and actually took me longer to read than I had anticipated (as I took breaks when the emotional density got to me).
Thanks to #NetGalley and #Scribner for providing me the ARC. All opinions are strictly my own.
Out 5/28
Ask Again, Yes is a wonderful family saga that strikes home.
It is the story of two neighbouring families in the Bronx , both fathers policeman, two of their children are best friends. Then a tragedy strikes and one family moves away.
This is a story about love, strength, coming of age, tragedy, mental illness, addiction but mostly about family and forgiveness.
How we all have different memories of the same incident. I know that happens in my family.
Ask Again, Yes is a heart warming book and I hated for it to end.
This will be a Book Club favourite, no doubt in my mind.
Thanks to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster Canada, Scribner for the privilege of reading Ask Again, Yes.
A touching book about who we commit to, and how we make a life with them, no matter what we bring into the relationship and what happens to us along the way.
This is a wonderful book.