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Between Before and After Blink Maureen Doyle McQuerry Books

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Between Before and After Blink Maureen Doyle McQuerry Books

“The year Uncle Stephen performed a miracle, all our lives changed.” Between Before & After starts with this promise of change and then plunges into the messiness of life: of secrets, of broken relationships, of skepticism. In one first-person thread, Molly, a curious 50s San Jose teenager, seeks to know her mother’s secrets. In the other third-person thread, her mother, Elaine, survives tragedy as a young girl in Brooklyn This novel is a lovely and realistic examination of life that leaves “a little room for miracles.”


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Between Before and After Blink Maureen Doyle McQuerry Books Reviews

Historical fiction is a beautiful, sometimes painful way to learn and appreciate past eras that have shaped our country. This new book by Maureen Doyle McQuerry is perfect for young adults. It gives them a close-up look of a young girl’s life in New York, 1918 when the flu epidemic took so many. The story flashes back and forth between 1918 and 1955, when the child, Elaine is grown with a daughter of her own. Molly is consumed with the need to understand her mother’s melancholy moods. As she digs deeper into the fractured history of her mother’s life, she may not be prepared for what she learns. This is an enjoyable, realistic but not too dark reflection of the growing pains suffered by many in the evolution of a nation.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Blink for making it available.)
I am equally charmed by Maureen McQuerry’s Between Before & After as a book and as a story. As a book, you can tell right away that Between Before & After is going to be a lovely and intricate story. The cover sketch is a key - with letters, pigeons, a typewriter, all sorts of clues - in shiny gold leaf woven into it. Even the typography helps convey the complexity Chapter One is introduced in different fonts for the chapter number, chapter header, chapter setting date and place, and the character point of view. Lovely little dinkuses throughout the book – a bird on a branch, a key, fleurons setting off passages - speak to the care with which the book has been crafted.

As for the story, Between Before & After is the story of three pairs of siblings. One pair we know well – Hansel and Gretel. Their story is interwoven in the stories of the other two pairs of siblings a woman and her brother, Elaine and Stephen, and her two children, Molly and Angus. We hear first from Molly, speaking in first person present, but the overarching story is that of her mother, Elaine. Hearing the story largely from Molly’s point of view immerses us in the mystery of Elaine’s struggles. We don’t know why Elaine behaves the way she does, or feels how she feels, or struggles as she does. Molly’s interactions with her brother Angus and her best friend, Aricelia, feel normal and familiar – but Molly’s relationship with her mother feels clouded by emotional distance. Between Before & After is the exploration of that distance, weaving in and out of the times and places and people of Elaine’s life.

In chapters from Molly’s perspective, McQuerry gives the reader mere glimpses of Elaine’s relationship with Molly and Angus’ father and Elaine’s strong sentiments regarding the church and miracles. In chapters told from Elaine’s perspective, we learn more about her challenges growing up. Hers was a hard life, with poverty, disease, and death, starting with the devastation of the 1918 influenza epidemic. It’s in the telling of the story back and forth in time that we come to understand the linkages between past and present; keeping faith and living in the world; and the relationship between a mother and her child. Molly tells the story of her childhood in trying to understand her mother, but in Between Before and After, we come to understand how Elaine has survived her own childhood.

Now that I know, I need to go back read it all again!

[Review originally posted on Goodreads, based on ARC.]
Now, I'm always interested in stories that connect different times in the past. Usually I like when they are related to more of major historical events, but this one had its own connections that definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering where it would all go, and how it would all connect. As we followed through the mother, Elaine's time period, there were so many things going on in her life that it kept me guessing and catching clues for paths to try to figure out just what the major secret she was hiding from her daughter was. I started to figure it out a bit, once we learned of the crush Elaine had, but how that all turned out wasn't the exact path I'd predicted in my head, and I love how an author can keep you guessing, and even when you start to figure it out, still have surprises left for you in the end! I liked how even though we had Molly's Uncle Stephen who was very religious, and then her mother who was not happy with god, all of that was done without seeming to force the reader to feel one way or the other. Definitely a great mystery and also a good family story. It was fun to read about a trip to the very first McDonald's in their town back in that time period and compare it to what the fast food restaurant is today. Now, I can't give a specific quote, in case anything changes in the final edition of the book, but there was one line or bit that I really, really liked. A part where one of the characters said that a good story isn't written to teach a lesson. Anything that the reader learns is through what they identify with in the story. Also they said something about there being something in the human heart that needs a story. I believe all of those things are true. At least for me, and the books that I read.
Every page kept me desiring to know what would happen next. Beautiful imagery and a well crafted story that I didn't want to put down.
I very much enjoyed this book and found it difficult to put down until finished, just wanted to keep turning the pages to see what would happen! Great story of resilience and determination to make things better. The author's writing makes it easy to envision what that period was like also. Would definitely recommend this book
“The year Uncle Stephen performed a miracle, all our lives changed.” Between Before & After starts with this promise of change and then plunges into the messiness of life of secrets, of broken relationships, of skepticism. In one first-person thread, Molly, a curious 50s San Jose teenager, seeks to know her mother’s secrets. In the other third-person thread, her mother, Elaine, survives tragedy as a young girl in Brooklyn This novel is a lovely and realistic examination of life that leaves “a little room for miracles.”