19102 Review books

Local book review: 'The Blessings'

In Elise Juska’s The Blessings, a striking assertion about the nature of families arrives swiftly in the early pages.

The Blessings
Elise Juska
(Grand Central Publishing, 2014, 272 pp.)

In Elise Juska’s The Blessings, a striking assertion about the nature of families arrives swiftly in the early pages. 

His family, John Blessing thinks, provokes the feeling of “standing so close to a mirror you can’t see your own face.” That’s apt, if the reader has lived among relatives like the Blessings. They exist in a flurry of weekends at the Jersey Shore, backyard birthday parties and meals of unfussy comfort food over which aunts trade gossip. Underneath, though, there is pain. This family can feel so real, the prose almost aches. 

Juska, director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of the Arts, employs each chapter as a chance to explore the minutiae of the lives of different members of the family. Every corner of the city earns a shout-out in its pages, from an Italian bistro on Rittenhouse Square to the towering churches of the Northeast. 

There are great struggles — cancer, divorce, a daughter’s bulimia — as well as celebrations — trips abroad, engagements, finally conceiving a child — and both are typical of many families’ intimate moments. The Blessings’ essential takeaway is needlepoint philosophy: family means being there for one another through the hard times. But the actions of that sentiment, all the things that aren’t obvious from the outside, are explored here in evocative detail. 

One mother in the story, Ann, likes sad movies. It’s perhaps for the same reason a reader would appreciate The Blessings: “These stories seem to get at some truth about people, life, that makes her feel connected.”