Laura Moriarty’s novel, The Rest of Her Life, was a selection of my library book club earlier this summer. The way I have the book club set up, participants vote quarterly for upcoming selections, based on a list garnered from my own suggestions as well as recommendations from the group. Whichever books end up getting the most votes are the ones that are chosen for discussion. I believe what made this book such a popular choice was that its premise sounded very much like something Jodi Picoult would write; indeed, both the front and back of the book’s jacket feature blurbs by Picoult praising the book. However, what made The Rest of Her Life a favorite among my book club members was also what made me more than a little hesitant to read it. Of the two novels I’ve read by Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper and Keeping the Faith), neither was that appealing to me, particularly My Sister’s Keeper, which of course seemingly everyone but me absolutely loves.  So it was not without some trepidation that I started reading The Rest of Her Life.

And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was pretty darn good.

Leigh is an English teacher in a small Kansas college town when one day she comes home to find that her life, and the lives of her family, has been irrevocably changed. Her teenage daughter, Kara, has hit and killed a fellow student, 16-year-old Bethany, while driving the family SUV. The effect this has on the family is one that happens to many families when tragedy strikes – it takes any cracks in the family dynamic and splits them wide open. And so it is with Leigh’s family. From the moment she arrives home to see her husband consoling their daughter, the estrangement between Leigh and her daughter grows ever wider and the resentment she feels towards her husband for the close relationship he shares with Kara becomes more and more unbearable, even as he questions Leigh’s love and loyalty to her own daughter.

We see everything in this book from Leigh’s perspective, and that is both the book’s strength and its weakness. Does her husband really not feel any guilt about Bethany’s death, or is that just how Leigh sees it? Is Kara really that repulsed by her mother or is that also Leigh (mis)projecting emotions onto her daughter? There are moments when the family’s love for one another shines clear through the haze of guilt and anger, such as when Leigh defends her daughter against the grief-induced tirade from Bethany’s mother during a chance encounter. But those moments are few and far between, and it is more often that Leigh’s words and actions do not accurately convey her thoughts and emotions, even if she thinks they do, so she finds herself constantly having to explain, defend or apologize to her friends, family and even strangers.

Leigh is a flawed and often unlikable individual, but a credible and sympathetic character. I didn’t find myself questioning whether someone like this could really exist, whether her circumstances were all that authentic in the real world. Rather than taking an extreme situation and making everything and everyone around it also extreme (ala Picoult), Moriarty has her characters and their lives firmly rooted in the real world, muck and all.