Did You Ever Have a Family opens on a summer morning, the morning of June Reid’s daughter’s wedding. Except that in the early hours a gas leak at June’s house has caused an explosion. The fire that follows kills her whole family, not only her daughter Lolly and William, Lolly’s fiance, but also her boyfriend, Luke, and her ex-husband Adam. Only June survives. In a single stroke she has lost everyone she loves. The loss, as she herself numbly acknowledges, is obscene. It is left to a gossiping neighbour in a local coffee shop to put the question June herself cannot begin to ask, let alone answer: “How do you recover from that? How would you even begin?”
Island Book's open book club meets the last Wednesday of every month at 7:30pm. Our staff facilitator chooses both fiction and nonfiction titles. All are welcome to attend, and if you purchase your book here in the store you'll always get a 10% discount.
