If Only I Could Tell You

August 5, 2019
Beckerman (The Dead Wife’s Handbook) does an excellent job of illustrating the corrosive power of secrets in this achingly real tale of two sisters and the mother who hopes to mend their tattered relationship. Lily’s life looks perfect—a high-powered marketing job, a beautiful daughter and loving husband—through the eyes of her long-estranged younger sister, Jess, a single and struggling mother to a teenage daughter, and a senior location manager for a TV show in London. Their mother, Audrey, is dying of cancer and is determined that her daughters will reconcile before she passes away. Jess’s intense anger toward her sister is a mystery to both Lily and Audrey, and Beckerman teases out both intriguing details and red herrings before letting readers in on the secret. The author combines authentically imperfect characters and a well-paced, plausible plot. Jodi Picoult’s fans will find much to love in this often heartbreaking story.

August 15, 2019
A mother and her two daughters' bittersweet journey through three decades is tinged by all-encompassing grief, steadfast love, and deeply held secrets. Audrey Siskin is a 62-year-old mother and grandmother facing her own mortality who realizes that the life she is leaving behind is not what she wants it to be. Finding herself pregnant and married at 18 had completely altered the life she expected to lead, and while she has never sung on stage, visited New York City, or even been the English professor she'd always dreamed of becoming, she has had a fulfilling life as a wife, school librarian, mother, and grandmother. But now, an aggressive form of cancer has her facing her own approaching death while her daughters, Lily and Jess, continue their 30-year estrangement from one another. Audrey dedicates the last months she has left to doing some of the things that her 16-year-old self aspired to do and trying to figure out a way to reconcile her children. The story unfolds in chapters written from three points of view: those of Audrey, Lily (the wealthy older sister, with a seemingly fabulous husband, house, job, and life, who yearns to reconnect with her younger sister), and Jess (the younger sister, scraping by, consumed with hatred for Lily because of the events of a devastating summer when she was 10 and her sister, 16). Author Beckerman (The Dead Wife's Handbook, 2015) is masterful in her storytelling. The narrative is fractured through time and viewpoint into large, weighty chunks and small, sharp shards, and she joins these together seamlessly into a tense tale that is much stronger for its delivery. While the male characters are, perhaps, one-dimensional, the female characters--even secondary ones such as teenage granddaughters Phoebe and Mia--hold the limelight in turn and are fully wrought. A gripping story about love and loss.

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