A Quiet Life - Ethan Joella - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Ethan Joella

GENRE: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Drama

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A slow but fairly satisfying read. Character-oriented plot, so it won’t work for all. Good if you want to read stories about characters with emotional baggage trying to move beyond the grief that drags them down.

Story Synopsis:

Chuck Ayers, who is in his seventies, doesn’t want to go Hilton Head alone without his beloved wife Cat who passed away recently. At the same time, he doesn’t even want to stay alone in the home they shared for so many years.

Ella Burke is working hard at two jobs to keep herself going while she await news about her daughter Riley who has been missing for a few months. All Ella wants is her daughter back.

Kirsten Bonato, who works at an animal shelter, misses her dad who was killed in a convenience store robbery. She feels like her life has changed track after his death, but she doesn’t know how to get it going again.

How these three characters and their stories are interlinked is what you need to read and find out.

The story comes to us in the limited third person perspective of the three main characters.

Where the book worked for me:

✔ The three main characters are complex, layered people. Each is guilt-tripping over something in the past because of which they cannot immerse themselves in their present. It’s nice to see characters that feel relatable even if their circumstances may not be what we have experienced ourselves. Their journey to seek closure feels genuine. Also worth remembering is that each main character belongs to a distinct age group, so their situations and emotions are distinct to them.

✔ The link between the characters is well-explained without being too convenient.

✔ As with most character-oriented stories, this one too proceeds at a slow pace. But the progress is steady and you feel like you know the characters better with every turn of the page.

✔ The prose isn’t too jazzy but impressive enough to keep one invested. This book shows how good storytelling doesn’t need a thesaurus to buttress it. (I don’t know what made my brain think of the word ‘buttress’ when I am trying to prove that simple words work better! Yikes!)

Where the book could have worked better for me:

⚠ The story becomes a little repetitive in between, especially in Chuck’s arc.

⚠ It is somewhat predictable. Of course, this is not a genre you read for thrills and twists but for thought-provoking scenes and emotional content. In that sense, the book delivers, I just wish it had been braver about pushing the boundaries.

Overall, this is a story of broken hearts and unresolved issues. With the three main characters stuck in the past, disconnected from the present, and wary about the future, you get to see a variety of human emotions at play. Kirsten’s story was the least impressive for me, but Chuck’s and Ella’s tracks made the book a worthwhile read.

Recommended to those who like character-oriented emotional stories. (Think Hallmark movie without a Christmas theme.)

My thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the DRC of “A Quiet Life”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.