Alan Rossi

When a young couple, Nicholas and April, are killed in a car accident on their way home from a party, questions arise over who will raise their four year old son, Jack.

Nicholas’s brother, Nathaniel and his wife Stefanie, are willing to step up, but no one, including them, are sure they are ready for the responsibility. Nicholas and Nathaniel’s parents, Katherine and David, have the resources to provide for their grandson but their marriage is on shaky ground, while Tammy wants the chance to atone for the mistakes she made as a young, single mother to April.

Unfolding in four parts, Rossi takes us into the minds of Nathaniel, Katherine, and Tammy in the days following their loss as they grapple with their grief, anxieties, regrets, and mortality, while facing the decisions that must be made as life continues.

I was impressed by the authenticity of each voice, but I also found it exhausting to be so immersed in the unfiltered thoughts of these characters. Nathaniel’s angst, Katherine’s confused grief, and Tammy’s guilt are intensely felt as they hold somewhat circular discussions with themselves, and others, about what they are, and should, be thinking, feeling, and doing.

It was the final devastating chapter though that affected me the most as Rossi takes us into the mind of Nicholas, badly injured and trapped in his upturned car for hours, as he contemplates the life he has lived, and what he will leave behind.

Though this is not really the sort of reading I prefer, objectively I can recognise the literary merit of Mountain Road, Late at Night, I and admire what Rossi has accomplished.… (altro)