Did You Ever Have a Family (Clegg) - Book Reviews
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Book Reviews
In his masterly first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg…has created characters who…are riddled with secrets and betrayals they've only just begun to unearth. They have complicated pasts, and it is these—far more than the immediate concerns of the present or the obvious burdens of grief—that the novel is most interested in exploring…Therein lies the quiet heartache of this novel. It's only natural for these people—for any people—to rue their missteps and unspoken words, yet only through the accident could their secrets be released, their better selves emerge, their lives begin.
Kaui Hart Hemmings - New York Times Book Review
How do you continue if all at once, everyone you love has been wiped away? With crosscutting perspectives and a voluminous cast of characters, Clegg constructs a layered narrative with some dexterous plot twists.
Boston Globe
Illuminate[s] how grief, guilt, regrets and the deep need for human connection are woven into the very flammable fabric of humanity…. Clegg's emotionally direct, polished novel is at once heartrending and heartening. It's a gift to be able to write about such dark stuff without succumbing to utter bleakness, and to infuse even scorching sadness with a ray of hopefulness.
Los Angeles Times
This isn’t your typical mystery, it’s something better: a real-life thriller in which resolution takes the form of acceptance. While [Clegg] never suggests anything as simplistic as closure for these tormented souls, he manages to find ways for them to move forward from this tragedy, making it seem a little less random than it did at the beginning, and that in and of itself is a kind of mercy.
San Francisco Gate
Clegg is a gimlet-eyed observer and is masterly at deftly sucking in the reader as he fashions an emotional tsunami into a profound, mesmerizing description.
Sunday Times (UK)
Clegg has produced a moving, clever novel that subtly dissects the relationships between mothers and their children, lovers, neighbors and strangers. Did You Ever Have a Family is an unpretentious work about how a life can be salvaged from the ashes. Bill Clegg is an author to watch.
London Times (UK)
A quiet novel of devastating power. Clegg has drawn a tale of prodigious tenderness and lyricism.... that reveals the depths of the human heart. [Did You Ever Have a Family] is a wonderful and deeply moving novel, which compels us to look directly into the dark night of our deepest fears and then quietly, step by tiny step, guides us towards the first pink smudges of the dawn.
Guardian (UK)
A quiet, measured and engrossing piece…. a poignant portrait of fractured family lives. Clegg’s prose conveys the numbed grieving state of mind, its quietness fitting its subject of deep clear-eyed sadness…. It approaches grief gently and, in the end, its gentleness is its triumph.
Daily Telegraph (UK)The sharp writing and haunting characters had me glued.
Glamour
[An] unexpectedly tender fiction debut.
Vogue
Bill Clegg’s Did You Ever Have a Family limns the far reaches of grief.
Vanity Fair
[An] incisive first novel.
Harper’s Bazaar
This first novel arrives with a shout…Clegg covers the full spectrum of human emotion in this beautifully nuanced story.
BBC
In trying to tell the faceted story of a single moment as seen by a hundred different eyes, Clegg has attempted something daring. And the wonder of it is how often his experiment succeeds.
NPR
In measured prose, Clegg unspools the stories of June and the other survivors as they face unimaginable horror and take their first halting steps toward hope and community.
People
Did You Ever Have a Family is the first full-length foray into fiction for Bill Clegg... but it reads like the quietly assured work of a veteran novelist.... it’s rare to find a book that renders unimaginable loss in such an eloquent, elegant voice.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) [S]orrowful and deeply...a story of loss and its grueling aftermath.... But it's Clegg's deft handling of all the parsed details—missed opportunities, harbored regrets, and unspoken good intentions—that make the journey toward redemption and forgiveness so memorable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Clegg is both delicately lyrical and emotionally direct in this masterful novel, which strives to show how people make bearable what is unbearable, offering consolation in small but meaningful gestures. Both ineffably sad and deeply inspiring, this mesmerizing novel makes for a powerful debut.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [O]n the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house literarily explodes, killing ex-husband Adam, lover Luke, daughter Lolly, and Lolly's fiance, Will. What follows is a propulsive but tightly crafted narrative....[wilth] stellar language and storytelling. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] fire kills the bride, the groom, her father, and her mother's boyfriend. "When something like [that] happened..., you feel right away like the smallest, weakest person in the world. That nothing you do could possibly matter."... [E]legantly written and bravely imagined.
Kirkus Reviews
In his masterly first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg…has created characters who…are riddled with secrets and betrayals they've only just begun to unearth. They have complicated pasts, and it is these—far more than the immediate concerns of the present or the obvious burdens of grief—that the novel is most interested in exploring…Therein lies the quiet heartache of this novel. It's only natural for these people—for any people—to rue their missteps and unspoken words, yet only through the accident could their secrets be released, their better selves emerge, their lives begin.
Kaui Hart Hemmings - New York Times Book Review
How do you continue if all at once, everyone you love has been wiped away? With crosscutting perspectives and a voluminous cast of characters, Clegg constructs a layered narrative with some dexterous plot twists.
Boston Globe
Illuminate[s] how grief, guilt, regrets and the deep need for human connection are woven into the very flammable fabric of humanity…. Clegg's emotionally direct, polished novel is at once heartrending and heartening. It's a gift to be able to write about such dark stuff without succumbing to utter bleakness, and to infuse even scorching sadness with a ray of hopefulness.
Los Angeles Times
This isn’t your typical mystery, it’s something better: a real-life thriller in which resolution takes the form of acceptance. While [Clegg] never suggests anything as simplistic as closure for these tormented souls, he manages to find ways for them to move forward from this tragedy, making it seem a little less random than it did at the beginning, and that in and of itself is a kind of mercy.
San Francisco Gate
Clegg is a gimlet-eyed observer and is masterly at deftly sucking in the reader as he fashions an emotional tsunami into a profound, mesmerizing description.
Sunday Times (UK)
Clegg has produced a moving, clever novel that subtly dissects the relationships between mothers and their children, lovers, neighbors and strangers. Did You Ever Have a Family is an unpretentious work about how a life can be salvaged from the ashes. Bill Clegg is an author to watch.
London Times (UK)
A quiet novel of devastating power. Clegg has drawn a tale of prodigious tenderness and lyricism.... that reveals the depths of the human heart. [Did You Ever Have a Family] is a wonderful and deeply moving novel, which compels us to look directly into the dark night of our deepest fears and then quietly, step by tiny step, guides us towards the first pink smudges of the dawn.
Guardian (UK)
A quiet, measured and engrossing piece…. a poignant portrait of fractured family lives. Clegg’s prose conveys the numbed grieving state of mind, its quietness fitting its subject of deep clear-eyed sadness…. It approaches grief gently and, in the end, its gentleness is its triumph.
Daily Telegraph (UK)The sharp writing and haunting characters had me glued.
Glamour
[An] unexpectedly tender fiction debut.
Vogue
Bill Clegg’s Did You Ever Have a Family limns the far reaches of grief.
Vanity Fair
[An] incisive first novel.
Harper’s Bazaar
This first novel arrives with a shout…Clegg covers the full spectrum of human emotion in this beautifully nuanced story.
BBC
In trying to tell the faceted story of a single moment as seen by a hundred different eyes, Clegg has attempted something daring. And the wonder of it is how often his experiment succeeds.
NPR
In measured prose, Clegg unspools the stories of June and the other survivors as they face unimaginable horror and take their first halting steps toward hope and community.
People
Did You Ever Have a Family is the first full-length foray into fiction for Bill Clegg... but it reads like the quietly assured work of a veteran novelist.... it’s rare to find a book that renders unimaginable loss in such an eloquent, elegant voice.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) [S]orrowful and deeply...a story of loss and its grueling aftermath.... But it's Clegg's deft handling of all the parsed details—missed opportunities, harbored regrets, and unspoken good intentions—that make the journey toward redemption and forgiveness so memorable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Clegg is both delicately lyrical and emotionally direct in this masterful novel, which strives to show how people make bearable what is unbearable, offering consolation in small but meaningful gestures. Both ineffably sad and deeply inspiring, this mesmerizing novel makes for a powerful debut.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [O]n the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house literarily explodes, killing ex-husband Adam, lover Luke, daughter Lolly, and Lolly's fiance, Will. What follows is a propulsive but tightly crafted narrative....[wilth] stellar language and storytelling. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] fire kills the bride, the groom, her father, and her mother's boyfriend. "When something like [that] happened..., you feel right away like the smallest, weakest person in the world. That nothing you do could possibly matter."... [E]legantly written and bravely imagined.
Kirkus Reviews
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