A Sign of the Times

They say a story starts with just a spark.For the Maloneys, it starts with their childhood home going up in flames.The fire takes the house, and the siblings scatter. Twins Fee and Didi find themselves in the dating pool, married and constantly competing with one another. Mo (just Mo, no "Maura" as her birth certificate may say) heads out west to California, embracing her affinity for numbers and identity as a lesbian. Martine goes to graduate school, which takes her across the world not only academically by studying Russian, but physically, taking up stations to teach in Soviet occupied countries. And Mick-he heads for the pysch ward. Over the years, he'll go in and out, learning how to manage his schizophrenia while his siblings manage their lives and each other's that, though different from one another's, all stem from the shared experience of their childhood, especially their father and mother's divorce-a timestamp they can't escape, even in adulthood. Braided in multiple POVs, Joan Wilking crafts the siblings' lives with, in some cases, peculiar, exacting prose, weaving a story of a family that despite their disconnection always comes back to each other. It may not be pretty, or often, or under the best of circumstances, but none can deny their bond when they are together.