Ask Again Yes
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A Novel
by Mary Beth Keane
On Sale: May 28, 2019
Publisher: Scribner
Print Lenght: 400 Pages
Ask Again Yes is a new gripping and compassionate family drama set between neighbours in suburban New York.
Gillam, upstate New York: a town of ordinary, big-lawned suburban houses. The Gleesons have recently moved there and soon welcome the Stanhopes as their new neighbours. Lonely Lena Gleeson wants a friend but Anne Stanhope – cold, elegant, unstable – wants to be left alone.
It’s left to their children – Lena’s youngest, Kate, and Anne’s only child, Peter – to find their way to one another. To form a friendship whose resilience and love will be almost broken by the fault line dividing both families, and by the terrible tragedy that will engulf them all. A tragedy whose true origins only become clear many years later . . .
A story of love and redemption, faith and forgiveness, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood – villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. A story of how, if we’re lucky, the violence lurking beneath everyday life can be vanquished by the power of love.
About the author
Praise
“A profound story… Keane’s gracefully restrained prose gives her characters dignity… shows how difficult forgiveness can be—and how it amounts to a kind of hard-won grace.”
—Vogue
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“One of the most unpretentiously profound books I’ve read in a long time… Keane writes with deep familiarity and precision about the lives of this particular generation… As a writer, Keane reminds me a lot of Ann Patchett: Both have the magical ability to seem to be telling ‘only’ a closely-observed domestic tale that transforms into something else deep and, yes, universal. In Keane’s case, that ‘something else’ is a story about forgiveness and acceptance… modestly magnificent.”
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
“A beautiful novel, bursting at the seams with empathy.”
—Brianna Kovan, Elle
“Keane’s novel is a rare example of propulsive storytelling with profound insights about blame, forgiveness and abiding love.”
—People Magazine
“Keane writes with acute sensitivity and her characters are consistently, authentically lived-in. . . . smartly told.”
—Entertainment Weekly
”This is one beautiful book. I was wowed by Keane’s writing and narrative skill—and by what she knows about trouble.”
—Stephen King
“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.”
—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions
“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.”
— Louise Erdrich, author of The Round House
“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.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
“Remarkable.”
—Booklist
“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.”
—Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves
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