The Lowland

I'm a bit confused by the book blurb, since this story is just as much a story about an entire family as it is about “two brothers”; that said, no blurb could really cover the ground that this book covers. Full of poignant looks into several different lives, tracing how a serious tragedy can play out for over forty years (for better and for worse), it's difficult to not reflect on one's own life in comparison to the lives lived in the book.

The writing is straightforward, almost to a fault–usually I enjoy a bit more wordplay, but for this story it works just fine, laying out these lives like points on a map.