Plucked from my TBR shelf, Joanna Hershon’s 2003 novel The Outside of August concerns siblings Alice and August and their fraught relationship with their seemingly free-spirited mother, Charlotte. The story starts when Alice is a kid, Gus a couple years older. Alice spends all her time waiting for her mother to come home, or if she is home, to acknowledge her in any way.

Alice was ten years old and she still couldn’t figure out what her mother did with her days. Charlotte hadn’t gone anywhere since mid-January, when she’d left for a month while the children were at school, having said good-bye only in passing, as they were headed out the door.

The novel propels us through the siblings’ adolescence until an event separates them, only bringing them back together many years later before separating them again. Alice feels that Gus knows something that he isn’t telling her, and after a late-night call from his wife, Cady, Alice hops a plane and heads to Mexico where Gus is squatting and surfing.

Sadly, I do not have unlimited shelf space, so when I finish a book I have to make the decision of where to house it. Will it go on my finished shelf or will I give it away? It used to be that I gave nothing away – even the books I didn’t really like. Even books that don’t really float my boat have something to offer, and if I actually finish it then that’s something, right? I am way better at DNFing now than I used to be. That might have something to do with the mountain of books in my physical tbr pile.

I didn’t actively dislike The Outside of August. I thought a lot of the writing was really lovely, but I also thought that the story was slow and meandering and when Alice arrived in Mexico the narrative felt disjointed and feverish – although maybe that was the point. The “secret” Alice felt August was keeping from her was revealed via a letter from their mother and it felt a little bit like a cheat – also unexamined, really, by either sibling. I know, life sometimes happens that way, but I didn’t feel emotionally satisfied when I finally finished my time with these characters.

This one will go in the donate pile.