Long Bright River: A Novel

thenextgoodbook.com
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
480 pages

What’s it about?
Mickey and Kacey are sisters who grew up in a working class Philadelphia neighborhood. Although they were once close, they now no longer speak. Kacey is an addict living on the streets of the old neighborhood, and Mickey is a patrol officer in that same neighborhood. Then a string of murders hit the neighborhood and Kacey goes missing.....

What did it make me think about?
The title of the book refers to the long bright river of departed souls from the opioid crisis. This book made me think about addiction, gentrifying neighborhoods, the way we police those neighborhoods, and of course- family.

Should I read it?
This was a great book! One of my favorites so far this year. This was a family drama wrapped up in a mystery. It also gave me a glimpse into a world I do not live in.

Quote-
"In a moment of clarity, once, Kacey told me that time spent in addiction feels looped. Each morning brings with it the possibility of change, each evening the shame of failure."

If you liked this try-
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh
The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I had high expectations after reading Heft, but this fell short. It is a very well written story about two sisters whose lives take very different turns. Mickey, is a bright young girl who has dreams of going to college but instead joins the police academy. Her younger sister, Kacey, falls into a life of drugs and living on the streets. Mickey is often patrols the same beat where her sister now lives. When a string of homicides happen in Mickey's district and Kacey disappears, Mickey becomes obsessed with finding the killer and her sister before it is too late.

I liked the alternating then and now. I really liked Mickey and her landlord, Mrs. Mahon. But it was way too long!

A very long build up for a fast wind-down. I kind of appreciate the open-ended ending, the lack of a feel-good, hopeful close. Overall though, the rest of the story felt very predictable non-dimensional

Wow, surprisingly unengaging when I thought so highly of God of the Woods. A needlessly long ride (editor, what editor?) that took me five separate attempts to finish and never paid off. None of these characters felt real to me, not a single one. It was as if the writer, in trying to portray uneducated or working class characters, decides to leach all color or precision from their commentary (and thereby, their perceptions, credibility, humanity, and relatability). Characters literally say things like, maybe I will, maybe I won't...or give monosyllabic answers while the main character is left wrangling with her same uninspected, one-dimensional (and so, so repetitive) feelings (guilt, regret, guilt, awkwardness) in the shallow exchanges.

All these conversations are opportunities --perhaps to contrast them with less awkward exchanges of the past (for instance, I never get a sense of when Mickey's partnership with Truman was great... as a narrator all she does is tell us it was, and discuss their common interests. It feels like an academic essay versus scenes of their former conviviality). Instead we get, ' I don't know what to say,' or 'I don't know what to do with my hands.' Yeah we know.

I should also add that I listened to this book on audio and I think that was a huge mistake. I am almost certain that readers of the book had a better experience, because the narrator reads this book in such a maudlin way — as if a sob is about to break in her voice at all times —it undoubtedly added to my dislike. This delivery contributed to a sense of unearned self-pity.

Beyond that there are many reasons why this book just didn't feel true to me. Of course the epidemic of drug use is true, but it really feels as if this author sat down and decided to write a novel about the epidemic of drug use, versus having intimate experience with someone they've lost or known. I also can't help but wonder, do they know anyone in this demographic? Because I do, and they're so, so funny. And so very smart and canny. Education does not equal smart, and for all Mickey's oft-professed academic excellence, I just don't see the curiosity or initiative in her character that typifies that kind of kid, especially those trying to break free from disaffected or troubled homes.

Kasey is just an effigy for the most part, and for all the discussion of the past sisterly love, there aren't many vivid examples that prove that or make that true or real. Maybe diving into Kasey's perspective, even flashes of her memory or past, would have helped. Certainly anything convincing depicting the sister bond beyond 'she took on bullies for me' would have been something.

Ultimately I felt absolutely nothing for any character in this book and stuck it out wholly because of my faith in this author. It could have and should have been edited down by 30% because the narrator just won't penetrate her own or anyone else's internal world enough for literary fiction and has little new to say after the first 60 pages, and the long bright river felt like a long grinding slog. The mystery wasn't enough to draw me along. I'm genuinely perplexed by the positive reviews on this one. Some of the reviews suggest that how much you like this book may depend on your familiarity with the region because the author does spend a great deal of time detailing the locale, so if you're from this part of Pennsylvania, might be worth a shot.

I found the gimmick of listing a bajillion names of people lost to heroin/fentanyl both at the beginning and end of this book to be absolutely excruciating. If that was expected to bring a sense of emotional weight to the book, it did not. I think by now we either understand and care about the magnitude of the addiction problem in this country or we don't (to the degree the human mind can comprehend scale like that) and listing a bunch of fictional names all jammed together certainly isn't going to learn that, at least not for me. Again, another feature that has got to be much more tolerable in a printed book than over audio. Holy fast forward.

Good story and character development. Also good twists that keep you wondering, which I liked. Just dragged put too long I felt.