THE FLOAT TEST, by Lynn Steger Strong
Writers are the worst, am I right? As a writer, I can say this. Whether we’re following in the grand “everything is copy” tradition of Nora Ephron or quietly “borrowing” other people’s stories, we cannot be trusted. But what happens when the writer is your beloved sister, and your whole family is kind of a disaster, with years of snubs, betrayals, and accidental and purposeful misdeeds between everyone, many of them aired in print by the writer?
And what happens when, in the midst of all that, you have to go home?
This powder keg of a dynamic is the backdrop to Lynn Steger Strong’s latest novel, “The Float Test,” which kicks off with an unexpected death. Deborah, the high-powered, demanding litigator matriarch of the Kenner family, suffers a fatal stroke while running. And so, during “the hottest summer in the history of Florida summers,” the four semi-estranged Kenner siblings — Jenn, Fred, Jude and George, all middle-aged, with middle-aged problems aplenty — converge to mourn and help their now-widowed father.
Jenn is the oldest of the siblings. She’s the “meanest and also sweetest,” and she now has six kids of her own. Fred, the writer, is next. She’s left her husband, is living in a borrowed house, and finds herself unable to write anymore amid a crisis of conscience (and confidence) after the death of a friend. Jude, the third, who has secrets of her own, assumes the role of the novel’s quasi-omniscient narrator, explaining, “A lot of what I’m saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I’ve imagined my way into, because why not.” Finally, there’s George, the baby who brings to the table marital and employment problems, along with a Lhasa apso named Libby.
If all that spiraling interpersonal drama isn’t enough, I should mention that in the opening pages of the novel Fred finds her mother’s gun. She carries it around in her bag, as we readers, in accordance with Chekhovian principle, wait for it to come out again. This, along with the mysteries of what’s really going on with each sibling, and whether they can find a way to be a family again (also: why the heck did their mom have a gun in her closet?), adds propulsion, acting as a foil to the muggy daze of Florida heat and the suspended-in-animation feeling of grief imbued in the story.
Here, Florida is also a family member, a character both challenging and adored, and Strong evocatively wrangles its polarities: the forces razing the wilds for developments of McMansions, which stand in stark contrast to the sprawling ocean, the gators, even the vultures. Like Florida, the Kenners are unruly in nature, full of ungovernable behaviors and self-interested choices, yet there’s a yearning for peace among them. If they can find harmony among themselves in this tangled place, maybe there’s hope for others, too?
That writers can’t be trusted might be a given; so is the fact that families are inherently complicated. As Strong grapples insightfully with questions of who really owns a story, we’re also asked to consider what it means to truly love another person, flaws and all — and, not only that, to turn the lens back on ourselves. After all, so often, the ways we show we care can also cause pain. But, for some reason, we keep going back. Jude, imagining what Fred might think at one point, asks, “What is the feeling that tells any of us, even after we’re grown-up and know better — know it’s likely that they’ll hurt us, maim us, leave us flayed open — to check in with the people with whom we share DNA?” In the end, that’s a far more interesting question than what happens with the gun.
THE FLOAT TEST | By Lynn Steger Strong | Mariner | 272 pp. | $28.99
Jen Doll is a freelance journalist and the author of the young adult novel “Unclaimed Baggage” and the memoir “Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest.” More about Jen Doll
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