By Madeline Cash
A suburban family's marriage unravels darkly
Subject
Themes
The Flynn household is coming apart at the seams when an ordinary suburban marriage quietly redefines itself as an open arrangement. Catherine Flynn, a former photography student who abandoned her art for motherhood, drifts into an affair with her neighbour Jim Doherty, reviving a long-dormant identity as an artist before his basement collection of crude ceramic sculptures modelled on past lovers repulses her out of the relationship entirely. Her husband Bud, a failed rock musician turned accounts manager at Alabaster Harbor, responds to the arrangement not with liberation but with despair, retreating nightly to sleep in the family minivan and briefly contemplating driving it into the sea, a plan interrupted only by his daughter Louise. Assigned to a Christian support group called Lost Lambs by an employer more worried about liability than his wellbeing, Bud finds unexpected comfort in Miss Priscilla Winkle, a devout woman raising a disabled daughter alone, and the tenderness between them becomes one of the story's few sources of uncomplicated warmth.
The Flynn household is coming apart at the seams when an ordinary suburban marriage quietly redefines itself as an open arrangement. Catherine Flynn, a former photography student who abandoned her art for motherhood, drifts into an affair with her neighbour Jim Doherty, reviving a long-dormant…
This novel belongs to a recognisable and currently thriving strand of contemporary fiction that might be called suburban gothic satire: stories that take the ordinary furniture of middle-class American life, church bake sales, beauty pageants, support groups, neighbourhood gossip, and gradually…
Family is depicted less as a fixed institution than as a shifting, improvised arrangement of people who choose, again and again, to show up for one another despite every reason not to. The Flynn household begins the narrative in a state of near-total dissolution: Bud sleeps in the minivan, Catherine…
The open marriage that Catherine proposes to Bud, always referred to simply as the arrangement, functions as the story's central experiment in whether infidelity, once formalised and named rather than hidden, might be rendered harmless or even beneficial. Catherine frames it in the language of…
Nearly every major character in this story is engaged in some project of self-construction, assembling an identity out of borrowed language, performance, or desperate improvisation because the identity handed to them by family and community feels insufficient. The three Flynn sisters offer the…
Corruption in this story operates less through dramatic villainy than through the accumulation of small, individually rationalised compromises, a structure that implicates nearly every adult institution in the town. Paul Alabaster's shipping empire, built by his father and expanded by Alabaster…
The three Flynn sisters each experience a version of coming of age defined less by the ordinary markers of adolescence, first loves, changing bodies, growing independence, than by the specific vacuum left by parents too consumed by their own crisis to notice what their daughters are actually doing.…
Bud Flynn is a middle-aged accounts manager at Alabaster Harbor, a failed rock musician who once performed to an audience of twelve before settling into fatherhood and a nine-to-five job to support his growing family. When his wife Catherine proposes an open marriage she calls the arrangement, Bud…
Catherine Flynn is Bud's wife and mother to Abigail, Louise, and Harper, a former photography student whose bohemian ambitions were quietly absorbed by marriage, motherhood, and the practical demands of raising three children in a house bought for the family by her own parents. She remembers her…
Abigail Flynn is the eldest of the three Flynn sisters, seventeen years old and widely regarded, by herself and others, as the prettiest person in any room she enters. Her preoccupation with appearance intensifies after an early relationship with an adjunct art teacher ends in his firing, and she…
Louise Flynn is the middle of the three Flynn sisters, fifteen years old and defined, in her own eyes and the narrative's, chiefly by her ordinariness. Sandwiched between the striking, self-assured Abigail and the disruptive, brilliant Harper, Louise has never broken a bone, won an award, or…
Harper Flynn is the youngest of the three Flynn sisters, twelve years old at the novel's start and easily its most precocious and disruptive character. Unlike her sisters, Harper has no discernible trauma driving her behaviour, only a restless, outsized intelligence that isolates her from other…
Wes Wyley, known around town as War Crimes Wes, is a taciturn ex-mercenary who works private security for tech billionaire Paul Alabaster when he meets Abigail Flynn at one of Alabaster's parties. Raised on a wheat farm by a cruel father who beat him for complaining about pain, Wes joined the…
Miss Priscilla Winkle is a devout, self-appointed leader of the Lost Lambs support group at Our Lady of Suffering, a woman who has endured her own share of hardship: her husband abandoned her and their disabled daughter Perry years earlier, leaving her to raise the child alone while volunteering at…
Paul Alabaster is a reclusive tech billionaire, heir to the Alabaster Harbor shipping empire built by his father Warren T. Alabaster, and the novel's central antagonist. Physically slight and gaunt, more meerkat than king in Abigail's assessment, Alabaster compensates for his unimpressive build with…
Father Andrew is the priest of Our Lady of Suffering, the church around which much of the town's social life revolves, and a man whose progressive self-image sits uneasily alongside a deep well of private guilt and eventual compromise. He fancies himself a modern, adaptable cleric, proud of his…
Tibet is Abigail Flynn's closest friend, an over-scheduled, high-achieving student whose parents named her, along with her brother Phoenix, after the place of her conception, a running joke among her family. Tibet excels at everything her school and extracurricular schedule demands of her, from…
Jim Doherty is the Flynns' neighbour, the owner of a themed British pub called Olive or Twist, and the man with whom Catherine Flynn begins her affair. Introduced as a source of casual, understated affluence relative to Bud, symbolised by his expensive car and neatly kept trellis, Jim initially…
Marshall is Wes Wyley's roommate, a fellow military veteran missing part of one arm, who lives with Wes in a small tenement apartment outside the city and subsists largely on food stamps and generosity from the Korean deli downstairs, whose clerk bends her own rules to feed him despite his limited…
Myles Doherty is Jim Doherty's son, an acne-scarred, socially isolated eighth grader who appears only intermittently in the novel but is given the closing perspective in its final chapter, a structural choice that gives his otherwise minor presence outsized thematic weight. Bullied at school for his…
Father Andrew spends his days battling a gnat infestation at Our Lady of Suffering, privately blaming Miss Winkle, a parishioner who cares for her disabled daughter Perry and brought the infested plant into the church. Bud Flynn stops by the confessional to ask, hypothetically, whether someone who…
Abigail Flynn, seventeen, has grown fixated on her appearance since a disastrous affair with a teacher ended in his firing. Her attention turns to a party at Alabaster Manor, the hillside estate of tech billionaire Paul Alabaster, where she and her friend Tibet talk their way in with the help of…
Abigail's friends the Biddle twins are fascinated by her soldier boyfriend Wes, though Abigail herself knows little about his past beyond a rural upbringing and early enlistment, filling the gaps with romantic imagination. Wes reveals he suffers from a painful autoimmune bowel disorder and prefers…
Bud brings his daughters to a beach clean-up organised by Father Andrew, bribing them to attend since Catherine is supposedly visiting her sister. On the beach the girls notice their father seems happier, and Harper reveals she already knows he is sleeping with Miss Winkle, information passed on by…
During a security shift at Alabaster Manor, Wes reflects on his hard upbringing on a wheat farm and his father's cruelty before dealing with a dying protester who accuses Paul Alabaster of poisoning her community through his oil refinery, causing her terminal illness and her infant daughter's…
Tibet, Abigail's over-scheduled friend, admits she has never understood romantic love, provoking a small rift when Abigail defends her feelings for Wes. Alone that night, Tibet uses her calligraphy expertise to trace Abigail's mysterious party invitation to a rare European penmanship style and…
Wes and Marshall move unnoticed through the party, following organ music to the manor's central atrium, where they find Louise and Harper, who defied instructions to wait outside. Together they watch dozens of masked men gather around a shallow pool led by Paul Alabaster, chanting a ritual word…
Myles Doherty, Jim Doherty's acne-scarred and socially isolated son, sits in a booth at an Italian restaurant called Lucky Penne, playing a handheld war game while his father makes call after call on his phone. Myles has grown used to being overlooked, having internalised his father's bitter…
Bud Flynn is a middle-aged accounts manager at Alabaster Harbor, a failed rock musician who once performed to an audience of twelve before settling into fatherhood and a nine-to-five job to support his growing family. When his wife Catherine proposes an open marriage she calls the arrangement, Bud…
Catherine Flynn is Bud's wife and mother to Abigail, Louise, and Harper, a former photography student whose bohemian ambitions were quietly absorbed by marriage, motherhood, and the practical demands of raising three children in a house bought for the family by her own parents. She remembers her…
Abigail Flynn is the eldest of the three Flynn sisters, seventeen years old and widely regarded, by herself and others, as the prettiest person in any room she enters. Her preoccupation with appearance intensifies after an early relationship with an adjunct art teacher ends in his firing, and she…
Louise Flynn is the middle of the three Flynn sisters, fifteen years old and defined, in her own eyes and the narrative's, chiefly by her ordinariness. Sandwiched between the striking, self-assured Abigail and the disruptive, brilliant Harper, Louise has never broken a bone, won an award, or…
Harper Flynn is the youngest of the three Flynn sisters, twelve years old at the novel's start and easily its most precocious and disruptive character. Unlike her sisters, Harper has no discernible trauma driving her behaviour, only a restless, outsized intelligence that isolates her from other…
Wes Wyley, known around town as War Crimes Wes, is a taciturn ex-mercenary who works private security for tech billionaire Paul Alabaster when he meets Abigail Flynn at one of Alabaster's parties. Raised on a wheat farm by a cruel father who beat him for complaining about pain, Wes joined the…
Miss Priscilla Winkle is a devout, self-appointed leader of the Lost Lambs support group at Our Lady of Suffering, a woman who has endured her own share of hardship: her husband abandoned her and their disabled daughter Perry years earlier, leaving her to raise the child alone while volunteering at…
Paul Alabaster is a reclusive tech billionaire, heir to the Alabaster Harbor shipping empire built by his father Warren T. Alabaster, and the novel's central antagonist. Physically slight and gaunt, more meerkat than king in Abigail's assessment, Alabaster compensates for his unimpressive build with…
Father Andrew is the priest of Our Lady of Suffering, the church around which much of the town's social life revolves, and a man whose progressive self-image sits uneasily alongside a deep well of private guilt and eventual compromise. He fancies himself a modern, adaptable cleric, proud of his…
Tibet is Abigail Flynn's closest friend, an over-scheduled, high-achieving student whose parents named her, along with her brother Phoenix, after the place of her conception, a running joke among her family. Tibet excels at everything her school and extracurricular schedule demands of her, from…
Jim Doherty is the Flynns' neighbour, the owner of a themed British pub called Olive or Twist, and the man with whom Catherine Flynn begins her affair. Introduced as a source of casual, understated affluence relative to Bud, symbolised by his expensive car and neatly kept trellis, Jim initially…
Marshall is Wes Wyley's roommate, a fellow military veteran missing part of one arm, who lives with Wes in a small tenement apartment outside the city and subsists largely on food stamps and generosity from the Korean deli downstairs, whose clerk bends her own rules to feed him despite his limited…
Myles Doherty is Jim Doherty's son, an acne-scarred, socially isolated eighth grader who appears only intermittently in the novel but is given the closing perspective in its final chapter, a structural choice that gives his otherwise minor presence outsized thematic weight. Bullied at school for his…
The Flynn household is coming apart at the seams when an ordinary suburban marriage quietly redefines itself as an open arrangement. Catherine Flynn, a former photography student who abandoned her art for motherhood, drifts into an affair with her neighbour Jim Doherty, reviving a long-dormant identity as an artist before his basement collection of crude ceramic sculptures modelled on past lovers repulses her out of the relationship entirely. Her husband Bud, a failed rock musician turned accounts manager at Alabaster Harbor, responds to the arrangement not with liberation but with despair, retreating nightly to sleep in the family minivan and briefly contemplating driving it into the sea, a plan interrupted only by his daughter Louise. Assigned to a Christian support group called Lost Lambs by an employer more worried about liability than his wellbeing, Bud finds unexpected comfort in Miss Priscilla Winkle, a devout woman raising a disabled daughter alone, and the tenderness between them becomes one of the story's few sources of uncomplicated warmth.