A beautifully written novel that is just relentlessly sad. It's as if the author set out to write about people but made sure only to relate their adamantly depressing inner selves and circumstances.

(At one point I laughed out loud when I thought, hey maybe I'll get a respite from all these sad people with this new character - but nope, here's all about how that character regrets never having children).

The narrative from the beginning propels the reader to find out what happened (murder! a missing child!), but since I was told before starting that this book contains no resolutions to its many mysteries, I lowered by expectations and instead was able to admire the writing. The biggest miss was being able to see Jenny as a woman in prison who felt immense guilt for what she did, who we saw react to her roommate and a piano being brought in, and other small things - the author allowed us this perspective on her, but nothing deeper as to the crime she was there for. These were all just glances into her life; here are some of her thoughts on this and that, but not the crime. This awful, awful crime of a mother killing her young daughter with a f*#&@ hatchet. Either keep it real in that we can never know what she was thinking about anything, keep her this mysterious woman in prison that Ann can't get to no matter how hard she tries from a distance, or go deep. This halfway-ness left me wanting, even if I knew it would never come. The June storyline I was okay with being unresolved - I understand not knowing, and since we only get her chronological perspective right up until she turns around and runs into the woods, I choose to believe (Sopranos style) that she's dead.

Anyway, REALLY LIGHT READ!!!!

This was almost a 3-star read but then I've been musing on it so much after finishing it, wanting to bring it up with people I talk to randomly, that it does have some sort of power that I must acknowledge.