Losing Charlotte

All the 80s teen movies took place in suburban areas with exotic sounding strip malls and stores I'd never heard of. Growing up in smallish town New Hampshire, I felt both totally uncool and totally aware that all the cool kids lived somewhere in the Midwest, probably near or in Chicago. Nothing ever happened in our town and there was never going to be anyone famous that I could say, Oh I knew him/her when...Although, there was apparently a kid from my class who went on to star in some ABC After School Specials (unconfirmed). Then I went to Middlebury College. Definitely a great school, loved it, but frankly no one was going to move and shake the world from there. Or if they had gone there, they'd already moved and shaken the world long before I got there (yeah, we've got some famous alums). We had decently well-known profs, too. I'm not denying it, but I still felt like it was all happening elsewhere.

So now I want to give a big shout-out to a Middlebury Alumna (who is younger than I, as all successful people seem to be these days). Heather Clay's first novel, Losing Charlotte, was a really nice read. No, it has nothing to do with Middlebury (or with New England. In fact, she only credits Columbia University---well, of course--for her writing career).In this book, Charlotte is the crazy sister, the interesting sister, the dramatic sister, the one who is going somewhere. Knox is the boring one who stays down on the family racehorse farm in Kentucky and pretends to be middle class and work with kids who have difficulty reading. She admires and resents all the room her big sister takes up, but is still willing to drop everything when Charlotte is set to deliver twins early. The family jets up to New York to be on hand, and then, yes, tragedy strikes. Suddenly, there's a vacuum to be filled and the parents are unable to step up. Knox begins to find a way to fill this space and to make peace with her lack of interest in children, her lack of commonality with her brother-in-law, and the absence of her sister.

I know it seems that it that the end will be predictable, but Clay does a great job of twisting our expectations. She doesn't answer everything, but satisfies everyone's story (or nearly does). She's done her research (and I hope it's not first-hand) so that the NICU scenes are painfully realistic. I've spent far too much time in neo-natal intensive care units myself and I did read these scenes with a lump in my throat. The fact that I could get through these is both a testament to time's healing and, I think, to Clay's matter-of-fact realism. So, yeah, there are some tough moments in this book, but it's a satisfying read and got me back on track after frittering around with mediocre books.


I'm too old to have crossed paths with Heather Clay and anyway, we probably would have traveled in different circles at school, but I'm glad to see Middlebury on the literary map with a new generation, even if it's thanks to Columbia's fine-tuning.