5 stars, Love is irreplaceable

HOW TO BURY YOUR BROTHER by Lindsey Rogers Cook

Alice loved her older brother Rob. He taught her so much, in the years before he disappeared. He ran away when he was 15 and Alice was 10. Their parents wanted them to be a part of the perfect little Southern gentry. Alice was devastated when Rob disappeared. Their mother destroyed every physical item that had anything to do with Rob. Secrets were kept from Alice. The book opens with Rob's death. She never talked to Rob or saw him alive, ever again.

Alice returns to her mother's home, after her mother's mental decline and need for the structured environment of an institution. She finds a stack of letters that Rob had left for several different people, many that she had never heard of before. She decides to take the time to deliver as many of the letters as she can.

I had mixed feelings about this novel, for starters, the title sounds sinister, but in reality, it is about how a loving sister copes with all of the turmoil in her life and reacts to the secrets that are coming out all over the place.

Much appreciation to #sourcebooks for the complimentary copy of #howtoburyyourbrother I was under no obligation to post a review. ( )

Unfortunately, this book didn’t hit me the way I wanted it to, though plotwise there was a lot of potential.

The story starts after Rob’s suicide; Alice finds a box of letters written from her brother to various people in his life — a life she didn’t know that much about because he ran away when he was fifteen. Finally gathering up the courage to address what happened to her brother in the years they were apart, Alice delivers the letters herself and embarks on a journey to find the answers.

The plot had a lot there, but honestly I was a little confused by the chronology of things. There were things that were happening in the current timeline, but also long passages about previous occurrences with Alice and with Robinson, and it was kind of difficult to follow.

The characters were also quite interesting, but I was more connected to the present timeline with Alice and Walker and their children than with Robinson and what happened to him. Because the story started after his suicide and was so strongly in Alice’s perspective, it was honestly hard to care about Robinson and connect with him.

One thing that I really enjoyed was Alice’s character development in the present, and how even though she was given a little romance sub-plot, that did not put a halt to the mystery and her personal growth, which she kept trying to find.

The writing style was honestly a little slow for me. The first half felt like nothing was happening, and the last part felt like things were revealed very quickly, but not in a satisfying way where our main character found things out slowly and pieced them together herself, but rather because the information was handed to her in the form of a letter or just by someone telling it to her.

Ultimately, this book was just kind of “stuffy” to me. It was hard to get through because the characters were distant and the plot was slow. In more abstract terms, I appreciate the main character’s development and I appreciate the plot arc, but in execution it was hard to get through the novel. ( )

How to Bury Your Brother by Lindsey Rogers Cook is a highly recommended look at a dysfunctional Southern family with secrets.

Alice's best friend, her brother Rob, ran away at age fifteen. She was five years younger than him and has missed him ever since then. Two decades later she is attending his funeral. His death, her mother tells her, was a heart attack due to an overdose on Oxycontin. She never had closure over his disappearance and death, so eight years later when her mother is in a memory care facility and she is cleaning out her mother's house she is shocked to come across Rob's guitar and a stack of seven letters he has written to various people. She also finds an autopsy report showing her family's lies. Alice is hurt that her mother hid all of this and never said a word to her. She is also hurt that she is not among the letter recipients, but she decides to find the people Rob wrote to and give them the letter he wrote to them years earlier.

This is a well-written, perceptive novel of dark secrets that families keep hidden and the secrets that are exposed but not acknowledged. Alice must not only face the secrets uncovered in the letters, she must also admit to the problems in her own life. As Alice delivers the letters, both truths hidden in the past and those not confronted in the future are revealed. She discovers some truths about her brother while she reexamines her relationship with her mother and, ultimately, she learns something about herself. While the pacing of the plot is uneven and interminably slow at times, it does pick up toward the end. Rob's story kept me reading. The final denouement is unexpected, but does tie in with the storyline.

Both Alice and her brother are well-developed characters. For all his problems, Rob becomes an appealing likeable character in the end after the letters are revealed. It is heartbreaking when he finally shares why he ran away. Alice mentions her husband's ongoing affair at the start but, much to my chagrin, just lets it slide without confrontation for much of the novel. Her inability to say something was off-putting. There were some other unanswered questions and encounters that made the end of the novel just a bit too pat for me. I do think this could be a good choice for bookclubs to discuss as there are plenty of issues presented that could evoke many reactions. 3.5

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Sourcebooks.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/05/how-to-bury-your-brother.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3329207307 ( )

I have been thinking about my takeaway on this book and I am conflicted. I am having trouble finding the point, the import, the understanding of so much hurt and despair. So many subtexts run through this story but they circle back to the same issue, a sister’s love and loss of her brother. The repetition bothered me, the inability to shake off the constant self-doubt and waiting for the perfect time, place, thought to force everything to coalesce. It was so painful to watch the abuse, almost knowing but denying, feeling but discounting, seeing a life caving in day by day.

I didn’t dislike the book, I just didn’t much care for it. Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a copy. ( )