"Death smashes a crater into your life, and you're left alone to sort through the rubble," says Isabel "Iz" Applebaum Moore, the 43-year-old, witty, self-aware heroine who narrates Days of Awe, an insightful novel by Lauren Fox that explores how grief can make every arena of life feel suddenly disorienting.
The book opens at the funeral of Josie Abrams--Iz's best friend and coworker, a fun-loving, whimsical art teacher at the local middle school--who was killed when her rusty Toyota skidded off an icy road and crashed into a guardrail. Josie's death is shocking and devastating for all who loved her, including her husband, Mark, as well as for Isabel and her husband, Chris. The four were close friends who shared many experiences and good times together. Josie's death soon becomes a force that begins to unravel all of their lives. Isabel's 15-year marriage to Chris frays and their 10-year-old daughter, Hannah, who considered Josie an "honorary aunt," becomes plagued with insomnia and moodiness--and begins to rebel against her mother.
As Iz tries to make sense of her loss and press on with life over the next 13 months, she recalibrates the weight of past events and re-creates scenes from the life she shared with her friend, both individually and as couples. Via rich, stream-of-consciousness flashbacks, Isabel pieces together fragments that reveal Josie's flaws and foibles--"moments that skittered by but left a trace in... memory"--aspects of Josie that Isabel never allowed herself to process fully during her friend's lifetime. Perhaps Josie wasn't really the woman Isabel believed her to be.
Along the way, Mark, whom Isabel has known since kindergarten, falls in love with a woman whom Josie despised. Isabel and Chris split up but attend couples' therapy. And Iz's ailing, grouchy mother, Helene--a Holocaust and stroke survivor--talks her daughter into attending a "Relationships in Transition" support group. There, Isabel meets Cal Abbott, a smart, charming, 59-year-old divorcé and scientific researcher, who challenges the confusion and grief infusing Isabel's broken heart.
Humor brings levity to Fox's frank, thought-provoking story that adds surprising depth and meaning, layer upon layer, page by page. As in Fox's other novels, Still Life with Husband and Friends Like Us, she presents scenes of seemingly mundane life that resonate with much larger and deeper dramatic implications. By employing a wry, likable narrator to chronicle the aching, pull-and-tug of grief and the joys and perils of domestic life, Fox once again explores, with a smart and refreshing perspective, the underside of friendships, marriage, love and loss--and the range of emotions that can plague and liberate the human heart. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
Shelf Talker: A woman's sudden death challenges her best friend to reassess the meaning of her life, her marriage, motherhood and to consider a second chance at love.