Lauren Fox's novel, [Days of Awe], is the story of a friendship, of a family, of grief, of pain, of betrayal, and of acceptance. It is Isabel's story, as she grapples with the recent death of her best friend, the disintegration of her marriage, and the resentment of her daughter. I thought Isabel was a great character - believably flawed but good, exhausted by life but always striving to do better, and wryly funny, as well as self-aware. The novel's main flaw, to me, was that I occasionally got confused by the muddled timeline so that I wasn't sure when what was being described happened in terms of previous events. As a flaw, it's a pretty minor one, though. This was an all-around satisfying read - funny and sad and bittersweet and tender. I will be looking for more by Ms. Fox.

4 stars ( )

3.5 stars because it has such beautiful words and insights. This book, essentially is about the grief. The title refers to the days around Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, though it is not about this holiday in particular. It is about the ways we wrong each other and the losses we encounter, and ultimately the redemption we find. The narrator, Isabel Moore has just lost her best friend Josie in a car accident. Josie was married to Mark, another best friend (who was Isabel's friend first -- since childhood. She introduced them). In the ways of aging friends and couples, their relationship starts to fray before Josie's death, which is hard for Isabel to deal with, and her own marriage to Chris starts to deteriorate afterward. Isabel just cannot get a handle on her grief. Her tween daughter Hannah is another loss, in a way, as she barrels into adolescence and now must be shared with Chris in their separate "homes." And she is the only child that survived after multiple miscarriages. Isabel's aging mother, Helene, on whom she always relied is having her own problems with health. And over their relationship has always been the shadow of the Holocaust, which Helene escaped as a child, but the rest of her family did not. There is a lot of gallows humor here which seems to be Isabel's M.O. and the author does that part very well, using plays on words and funny puns. What kept this from a solid 4 or even 5 was the disjointedness of it. It skipped around quite a bit in the time frame, which was a challenge. That may have been more my own fault and sloppy reading, so I'd be willing to reconsider. Pluses were the beautiful friendship between Josie and Isabel -- so real; the description of their teaching jobs -- more humor and also poignancy; the rawness of emotion Isabel feels and how it disables her (though part of me wanted to tell her to get a grip!) and the non-cheesy introduction of Cal, a potential suitor she meets in her Relationships in Transition support group. I usually want a happy ending -- I just have to be open to one that has a different qualification than mine. ( )

Isabel Moore, the appealingly flustered forty-something protagonist of Lauren Fox’s novel Days of Awe, is grappling with several profound and sudden changes in her life. In the space of a few devastating months, her husband Chris has moved out of the house and into an apartment on his own, her daughter Hannah, on the cusp of adolescence, has inexplicably transformed from a smiling little girl into a sulky brat, and her out-spoken and rebellious best friend Josie has been killed in a single car crash. The action depicts Isabel’s attempts to compensate for and understand a series of painful losses and her struggle to adjust to a revised sense of self within reduced personal circumstances. Temperamentally, Isabel is somewhat passive: an indifferent disciplinarian, a follower-of-rules who is often shocked by Josie’s mutinous attitudes and defiant behaviour. Both are teachers. Their friendship developed and solidified within that context over a dozen or so years, eventually growing warm and trusting. But in the months leading up to Josie’s accident, Isabel noticed a change in her friend’s demeanor and conduct: an emotional withdrawal and a not-so-subtle shift from simply flaunting acceptable behaviours to outright recklessness. After Josie’s death, the fact that Isabel did almost nothing to explore this change and find out what was causing it is a constant source of guilt. Similarly, she is knocked for a loop when Chris moves out, and seems helpless when confronted by Hannah’s snarly eye-rolling. It is Isabel’s lack of preparedness for the obstacles that life flings in her path that makes her so sympathetic and believable: her candid assessment of herself as someone with no road map for the future, someone who never sees it coming, someone who puts on a brave face but is actually making it up as she goes along. We have all felt that way, especially when life blindsides us with some calamity, but we push forward regardless because society demands that we pretend to have it all under control. Isabel the narrator is under no such constraint, and her fumbling and mostly unsuccessful attempts to deal with the ever more complex challenges of day-to-day living—not to mention her own emotions which, as the pressure mounts, become volatile and unpredictable—provide welcome moments of hilarity within the novel’s tragic framework. Fox’s writing is vivid and engaging, and the narrative is punctuated by wry observations on family, love and parenthood and Isabel’s ironic and self-deprecating admissions of incompetence in just about every aspect of her own life. Days of Awe is a witty, wise and entertaining work of fiction by a writer with a deft comic flair, and if the ending is a bit tidy and abrupt, it hardly detracts from the novel’s emotional clout. ( )

A special thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It took a little time to get invested in the book. There were some confusing bits at the beginning when the story switches between past and present.

Meet Izzie, recently separated and mourning not only the death of her marriage, but the death of her best friend Josie who happens to be married to her childhood friend Mark. Izzie is not always likable, in fact, I found her extremely immature at times, and if you are looking for a character you can root for, she may not be your girl. In fact, I actually identified more with Chris' feeling towards Isabel and her dramatics. “There is a peculiar kind of terror you feel when the person you are closest to — for better or worse — begins to formulate the idea of a life without you.”

Fox is a really good writer, and there were many wonderful passages to linger over - she has a gift for capturing emotion. That being said, I did find the the book a bit on the long-ish side and felt that her relationship with her mother and the mother's back story was just extra (it was interesting, but for me just added to the bulk of the book). And if you are waiting for a big finish, the book just kind of fizzles out.

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I found Days of Awe frustrating and compelling in equal measure, which reflects the complex characters at the heart of the novel. The portrayal of life as a 40 something wife, mother and teacher was interesting, and I think realistic.

Two aspects of the novel frustrated me; firstly, I found Isabel's interest in Cal rather unconvincing. Secondly, the disjointed/flashback plot structure meant that the pace sometimes became very slow, and at a point when I wanted to know more about Josie, the narrative would switch back or forwards and focus on something seemingly unconnected. I realise that this was intentional, but it left me unsatisfied.

I received an advance digital copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )