Series Name: Cyrus Haven, #4

Review By Gabrielle

A compelling novella, The Most peels back the layers of a marriage in 1957.

Favourite Quote:

In the pool, Kathleen lowered her forearms to the water’s surface and let them float. Her brown hair was tied into a wet knot at the neck. She playfully kicked her legs and Virgil could see the flesh on her thighs moving underwater. When her toes touched the bottom, her whole body shook, slightly.

Goodreads Synopsis: 

It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Katheen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.

A consuming, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, THE MOST breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, Kathleen and Virgil hurtle towards each other until they arrive at a reckoning that will either shatter their marriage, or transform it, at last, into something real.

I loved this book. It is a short one, just a novella, but Jessica does a great job of packing the details into such a short text. It’s beautifully written, and I found myself pausing over some sentences that resonated with me. I was left with the feeling of observation, of being on the outside looking in on a family and their life.

Kathleen is an intriguing character. Once a college tennis champion, she could have had a promising career in sport, but chose instead to marry Virgil and become a housewife. Virgil for his part, is harder to love but equally as interesting. He’s one of those men that goes with the flow, rather directionless, taking the path of least resistance.

Their story challenges us to think about the choices we make (or don’t make but let happen) and how they shape our lives. Although this book is set in the 50s, and you can see how the time period would have also shaped some of the decisions they made, the core message is timeless.

This book is also about marriage and intimate relationships. What will we do to maintain them, and what will we think about and do when no one is watching? How well do we know our partners? Both Kathleen and Virgil harbor secrets from each other, and the reader gets an inside view of both sides. What’s so thought-provoking about this set-up is that the reader can sympathize with both sides and see how these decisions get made based on the time period and the characters. It made me think about how I might have acted in the same situations and wonder how they would possibly resolve their issues.

Completely absorbing and intricately detailed, this story makes readers feel like they’re looking in the window on a slice of life in the 50s.

Thank you, Hachette Book Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.