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A Little Hope
Ethan Joella
Scribner
320 pages
Just a little note to the readers, not to be misled by the cover of the book. This would lead me to believe that this is an optimistic, upbeat book. It is a good, though not perfect, read but it is not happy. Since we find out in chapter one, it is not a spoiler. One of the main character has cancer. Someone who is triggered by this should know because it may not be the book for them.
Ethan Joella does tend to write optimistic novels, so this surprised me. But it was his first book. While I am hoping to read his soon-to-be-published work, I figured it was a good time to read some of his books I haven’t yet read. This book was not a happy one but it was well-written, especially as far as character development and language is concerned. Mr. Joella has a mastery of the English language which shines through in his narration. His dialogue is also very natural and he uses it well to reveal character details.
Nonetheless, while I enjoyed it, it was not my favorite of his books, not so much because it wasn’t optimistic. It was a little disjointed. While the primary focus is on the character with cancer and his family and how they are coping with the situation, there are other characters that are introduced and the narration is over their shoulders. I think that Mr. Joella’s intention was to show how different characters in this Connecticut town dealt with adversity. Cancer was the worse of what the characters dealt with but no one was happy. This was not the flaw because no law says that a book has to be happy or that only a happy novel can be good. The flaw was that it became somewhat confusing to go back and forth between the different characters.
Nonetheless, it is worth reading, especially to see how this author has changed and grown since this book, which was his debut, and to be swept up into his beautiful prose. I will also note that this happens to be a wonderful example of women’s fiction that was written by a man, which I find to be uncommon.
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