Introduction

Award-winning writer Stewart O'Nan has been acclaimed by critics as one of today's most accomplished novelists and hailed by The New York Times as "a master of voices and the place they resonate from, of human rhythms and the universal rhythms they cut across." Now, with Wish You Were Here, he reaches a new level of achievement, weaving together the lives and desires of three generations of an American family gathered together for one final summer week at their summer cottage. A year after the death of her husband, Henry, Emily Maxwell summons her family to their vacation house on Lake Chautauqua, in western New York, one last time before selling the place. Joining her is her sister-in-law Arlene, a retired schoolteacher who silently mourns the passing of the lake house from her family's hands and is still wounded from a love lost long ago. Emily's firebrand daughter, Meg, a recovering alcoholic recently separated from her husband, brings her children from Detroit -- the blossoming Sarah and the timid Justin. Emily's son, Ken, a struggling photographer who quit his job and mortgaged his future to pursue his art, brings his wife, Lisa, who is secretly heartened to be visiting the house for the last time -- and not-so-secretly cool to her prickly mother-in-law -- and their children, the bookish Ella and the troubled Sam. With honesty and generosity, O'Nan inhabits each character during the course of their week together, illuminating the many lives of the Maxwell family as memories of past summers resurface, old rivalries flare up, and love is rekindled and born anew. Poignant and resonant, Wish You Were Here is a magical book whose beauties are as moving as a summer storm and as brilliant as the glint of sun on water.

Editorial Review

A deep, poignant study of a family fighting its inner demons awaits in Stewart O'Nan's Wish You Were Here. A year after the death of her husband, Emily Maxwell gathers her immediate family together at their summer home on Lake Chautauqua in western New York for a final sendoff and to dole out keepsakes before the new owners move in. Joining Emily is her daughter, Meg, fresh from rehab and upset over her imminent divorce, and Meg's children: the emotionally unstable Justin, and Sarah, a teenage beauty learning to use her charms. Ken, Emily's fortyish slacker son, and his wife, Lisa, also bunk down for the week, bringing along their two kids: the troubled Sam, and Ella, a plain, smart girl who finds herself with a crush on her cousin, Sarah.

O'Nan has a gift for voicing the inner fears that motivate and stifle us, and his characters move and act as members of a polite society--a family even. Yet each is distinctly alone, with voices and turmoil raging inside. The tension between the characters is keenly drawn, and O'Nan perceptively captures the snippets of thought and memory that follow us around. Ken notes "he assumed more than he knew, not only about the world--whose workings would remain closed, forever a mystery--but even those closest to him." Emily, while preparing dinner, finds her late husband's bottle of scotch, and imbibes:

She went to the window over the sink and held it up to the light, long now and mote-struck, casting shadows under the chestnut, firing an amber glow in her hand.... She looked around the kitchen again as if she'd forgotten something but couldn't find what it was.

Wish You Were Here is an excellent character study of a family grudgingly plodding forward while believing the best chance for happiness passed by sometime ago. --Michael Ferch

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