The Fates Will Find Their Way audiobook

"In your endless summer night / I'll be on the other side.When you're beautiful and dying /All the world that you've denied ..." What does Hole's "Boys on the Radio" have to do with Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel (besides me wishing I'd written them both)? To me, both Courtney Love & Hannah Pittard (or perhaps Billy Corgan for Courtney Love) perfectly evoke a sense of youthful longing that is so incredibly intense, it's hard to move past it. Pittard's novel chronicles a group of suburban boys as they repeatedly fail at moving past this longing -- even into their adulthood. As others have mentioned, it's a novel dealing with imagined "what ifs" in response to a neighborhood girl's disappearance. Oh, but it's so, so much more than that, and it's incredibly frustrating that I can't even begin to come close to describing how beautiful this novel is.I should mention that the only reason I even picked this book up was because I saw it compared to The Virgin Suicides on two different sites. I read Eugenides' novel in 1999. It was such an ethereal & perfect read that I immediately categorized it as "one to save for a future re-read." I've yet to re-read it (I will soon!), but I can tell you that Pittard's novel comes extremely close to the perfection that is The Virgin Suicides. I want everyone to read The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel , seriously! If you're worried about it being depressing, just know that Pittard's look into the male adolescent brain is as funny as that scene in the junkyard in Stand By Me when the boys discuss Annette Funicello's "assets." I recalled that junkyard scene when reading one similar in tone in The Fates Will Find Their Way. The neighborhood boys contemplate the sexiness of one of their classmates' moms, and the narrator says this: "Mrs. Dinnerman was the hottest of all the moms. In some ways, it was a shame that she had to be called a mom at all. It seemed beneath her station." With zingers like this nestled on every few pages, how could you not love Hannah Pittard? This author is a keeper!

I'm not sure if I "really liked" this book, but I know that I "really liked" the writing. There are beautiful sentences and imagery and ideas strung out here. There is a kind of twinkling to Pittard's prose. ("It is that pink time of night. It's that time of night just before our wives come to bed. We can hear them rummaging about in the kitchen beneath us, turning off lights, returning a stray dish to its rightful place in the cabinet, giving the dog a final treat. ...where the streetlights flicker to life, the air is lavender, effervescent.")My gripe—and it's really only a personal opinion—is the execution of the novel. Everyone is comparing its use of the collective to The Virgin Suicides, and that is kind of unavoidable seeing as how both novels deal with the male consciousness as directed, in dreamlike quality, toward the female mystery. Clearly, it was powerful in the former, but I actually think that delivery did Fates a disservice. I see why it was done, but, like all of the maybes the book supposes, I wonder what shape this might have taken told in another way. And I couldn't quite believe the fixation on Nora—regardless of the unfinished feeling her disappearance may have left—after all of the years. I wasn't convinced.Still, I would recommend this, especially, to book clubs. And again, the prose is beautiful.

Take the nostalgia of The Wonder Years, add the boys’ club feeling of The Sandlot, and mix in the dark and complicated narration of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and you will arrive at an approximation of the tenor of Hannah Pittard’s debut, The Fates Will Find Their Way.In a time that must be somewhere in the mid-Atlantic around the mid-1980s, a group of boys comes of age. Yet, in the midst of their growing up, a neighborhood girl, Nora Lindell, an object of their admiration, goes missing on Halloween night. Her fate is never known. The boys — who later become young men, husbands, and fathers — are undeterred in their mental pursuit of her, spending their lives hypothesizing about Nora Lindell’s whereabouts. But while the boys take them as imaginary gospel truths, they are just that — ever-shifting hypotheses. Imagining Nora as the wife of an older Mexican man in Arizona, the narrator says,“Let’s say it was a summer day. One that was uncharacteristically hot, even for Arizona. It was like this — it had to be like this — because heat alone — isolated, confined — can make a person crazy, can turn a good thing bad, if only for a moment. And don’t forget that we like the Mexican. We like him because, like us, he loves Nora. He has cared for Nora and her two babies. So let’s say it was hot. Let’s say there was enough heat to excuse any sing, any crime, any transgression, just this once.”Beyond the hypothetical tone that permeates the entire novel, the most fascinating feature of this book is highlighted in the above passage — the use of a first person plural point of view. While the boys are named, the narrative voice transcends the point of view of any single young man; they are “we” as boys and “we” are adults. The narrative voice is none of them and all of them at the same time, perfectly expressing the follies of childhood from the safe distance of adulthood,"We were sophomores, newly sixteen, a year shy of missing Nora Lindell terribly. We were creeps, jerks, idiots. We were boys; we couldn’t help ourselves."Partially due to this narrative perspective, the novel lacks a linear plot. This isn’t a murder mystery. It isn’t a tale of boyhood adventure. Each chapter is more like a vignette, capturing a particular incident in this life of this group of friends — moments pushing them from childhood to the acceptance of their adulthood.And that’s really what the Nora Lindell obsession is about — a hesitance to let go of the things of childhood and grow up. Preferring to obsess on their youth, the men age and accept adult responsibilities without emotional maturation. This is a debut that, without a doubt, will catapult Pittard into the literary elite. It’s experimental and fresh without being self-conscious. The writing is impeccable … and exciting. This is a novel that creeps up on you in all the best ways. Pre-order a copy of this book! You won’t regret being among the first in your circle to devour this novel, and you’ll feel proud to have “discovered” this rare new talent!

“None of us was stupid. We were just dreamers. Caught in the dream of the Lindells and what might have been.”There are plenty of books about missing teenagers. That’s certainly nothing new. But typically these narratives are focused on unraveling the mystery of what happened. In The Fates Will Find Their Way, Hannah Pittard takes a different approach: What if we never find out? What then?When 16-year-old Nora Lindell disappears from her cozy Mid-Atlantic town, the boys who knew and adored her are left reeling — caught forever in the gravity of her absence. Without any concrete answers concerning Nora’s fate, they’re unable to ever find closure. Instead, they speculate on what might have happened to Nora, imagining a series of “what ifs” in the decades that follow.As the boys become men, they marry and buy homes and have children of their own, but there remains a part of them that never grows up, forever lost in the past, grieving for a girl who no longer exists.Pittard’s narrative style is both clever and befitting: the entire novel is told in first person plural — the tone haunting and ethereal, much like The Virgin Suicides.This is the first of Pittard’s three novels, and what’s most interesting to me after having read all of them is how distinct they are. Her range and versatility as a novelist is extremely impressive. My biggest complaint with this one is that with so many characters, it became difficult at times to keep track of them all. I can also see some readers finding the ending anti-climactic, though I was satisfied with the resolution.This complex, character-driven novel offers a fresh take on the common trope of the missing teenager, filled with plenty of Pittard’s signature psychological insights. Often in life we don’t get the catharsis of finding all the answers; The Fates Will Find Their Way is a meditation on this harsh truth.

As I get older, I find myself more and more drawn to these kinds of books. And by "these kind" I mean books about the mystery of life and the ways in which we interact with one another, sometimes foolishly, sometimes passionately, sometimes blindly, but always with a deep desire to understand. This book is, at its core, about trying to understand. And it's wise enough to not present any answers, but instead suggest them. It's a beautiful, fever-dream of a book, collectively narrated by a group of boys who struggle to become men while groping with their teenage selves and the long shadows those years cast over the rest of their lives. Here's one of my favorite bits that really shows how wise and beautiful a writer Pittard is--"...we thought about how little had happened in our lives, but how quickly the little that had happened had actually gone by. It was hard not to be angry with our bodies, with our aging. It was hard to believe that we'd actually gotten this far and not figured out a way to stop it, to pause life, to enjoy it. Hadn't our own fathers been counting on just that--on our ability to outlast what they couldn't?"Those sort of moments abound in this book. It's a book that sneaks up on you and sort of crushes you. Warning, it's a mystery, but there is no solution or real investigation, so if you're looking for a traditional crime novel, look elsewhere. However, if you're looking for a brilliant novel about friends and the way life slips out of our grasp so quickly and how we struggle to make meaning, then this is a five star book.

6 out of 5.Holy shit I *loved* this book. A young woman goes missing on Halloween night and the boys of her town can't help but thinking of her over the course of the next 25-odd years. Told in first person plural / third person, it's a daringly structured novel (with a definite h/t to Tim O'Brien's IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS) but one that brings immense pleasures both in how that structure plays out and also in the little moments of individual lines. Pittard captures teenage boys becoming men better than most men can do it - but she also captures the suburbs of the Mid-Atlantic, that beautiful period of time in the late 90s when we could all be free and unconstrained by fear or technology... this is so very much my kind of book.

The premise of this book…the heart of this book is the disappearance of Nora Lindell. An ordinary neighborhood, a Halloween Party and Nora is never seen or heard from again.The most amazing aspect of this book is that we do not find out what happens to Nora.The story unfolds from the eyes of an unknown narrator. This narrator is one of the neighborhood boys and the entire telling of this story is from the view of this boy who seems to be telling the story from a “we” perspective. This narrator speaks for all of the boys in the neighborhood as they are boys and as they grow into men…men with wives, babies and families of their own. There are many and varied theories about what happened to Nora Lindell and all of them are believable. I wanted to believe all of them except for the one with the saddest outcome. Each concept was presented in an orderly believable manner. I was caught up in each idea…I found myself saying to myself…”Yes, I can see that happening or of course, of course…that is what happened”. But again we never truly know.Hannah Pittard has written a truly beautiful and mesmerizing book. I was caught up in adolescent anxiety and school and parties with neighbors and college and aging and pretty much life in general. The realization for the narrator that this is what life is…being young and then being old and all the life stuff in between. It truly is a lovely lovely book.

Originally posted on http://bookalicio.usThe Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard is one of the more beautiful books I have read in my lifetime. I felt like I was watching the passing of time and living my life secretly along with the boys who miss Nora. At first as the reader I wanted to know what did happen to Nora, but the feeling passes and you are waiting with bated breath for the next story the boys concoct of her disappearance and later the stories they tell about themselves.Pittard hits the nail on the head of life in suburbia. The boys and girls and eventually men and women do what their parents did before them. They seem mildly apathetic, due to the loss of Nora and the what if's plaguing their lives. I think I was most sensitive to Danny whose mother killed herself because she had cancer, and whose father was a raging alcoholic. The boys while kind to him never truly respected him or saw him as a peer growing up. Trey I wondered a lot about in the beginning of the book, the road he took for himself seemed genuine.I just can't say enough about this book. It is a unique opportunity into the minds of others. There is laughter, tears, and heartbreak and you will be engrossed on every page turn.FTC Disclosure: I received this title from the lovely Mark at Harper Collins for the purpose of review.

Lately, there have been a plethora of books about missing girls and what they signify for those left behind. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sara Braunstein and Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan spring instantly to mind.In Hannah Pittard’s absorbing The Fates Will Find Their Way, this territory is mined again, and quite convincingly. Sixteen-year-old Nora vanishes one day and no one knows quite what happened. What’s left is a series of rumors, imaginings, suspicions, and what-ifs from teenage boys whose lives she touched.Ms. Pittard makes a risky choice in using the first person plural for narration – the “we” tense. It’s a hard tense to pull off, but she does it quite well. For instance, as the boys grow to men, she writes, “We owned homes, had wives. Some of us had more than one child by then. In many ways, we were kings. Everything was ahead of us…”But is it? As the fates dictate that the boys settle down into preordained future roles, something is lost in each of them. At one point, the narrator looks back to a time when the future was more limitless: “Our only limitation was our imagination, and that school year – and every school year after – our imagination seemed to grow, to outdo, what we’d ever believed possible. We outran our wildest fantasies. That is, until Nora Lindell went missing…”Nora is the fixed mark in time of all that might have been. Her life remains limitless, at least in the imaginings of her now-adult classmates; she took off to Arizona, she became pregnant, she married a much-older man, and so on. Their lives, however, are constrained by the realities of life, the wives and the babies and jobs and the homes as they sleepwalk forward. Ms. Pittard writes, “Certain outcomes are unavoidable, invariable, absolutely unaffectable, and yet completely unpredictable. Certain outcomes are that way. But maybe not Nora’s. Maybe she was the only one who escaped…”This haunting and minimalistic book has but one flaw in my opinion: Nora is consistently a symbol and never acquires that real-life mystique and fascination that would cause these teenage boys to remain starry-eyed and reverent way into adulthood. The conceit overpowers the reality of the story.That aside, there is some mighty fine writing from a debut author and some deep psychological insights that keeps the reader turning pages. The Fates Will Find Their Way is a lovely little gem.

This is a small concept book, very short and insular in premise, that deepens and reverberates eloquently. When a sixteen-year-old high school girl goes missing one Halloween from a "mid-Atlantic" (and obviously small) town, she is mythologized by the people she left behind, especially a group of her male peers. The narrative covers several decades, in a non-linear but succinct, crisp structure. The narrators are a group of voices that become one voice, a collective consciousness of sorts. The reader doesn't distinguish differences between the voices, which Pittard intended. I liked the concept in theory (the collective voice) but occasionally, in reading, the lack of discrete voices was understimulating.The missing girl, Nora Lindell, becomes more than herself. She morphs into an enigma, and eventually into a symbol of "a tally of the people who left us behind." Nora is merely a point of departure to explore and examine the lives of these boys, now men, who failed to live large, whose dreams were often squelched, and who sometimes made poor choices. Their fantasies of Nora's life or death after that Halloween are projections of their own private guilt, fears, diminished dreams, and desires. Nora herself alternately fades and hovers in the subconscious of these men's lives. She becomes their cherished avatar.The prose is economical and lovely, giving us a haunting coming-of-age story that is innovative and engaging. I did have a bit of a problem accepting that the voices were male, as it read as soft and female to me. I wasn't convinced that these disembodied voices were attached to male characters, and it became a weakness that occasionally removed me from the story's authenticity. (The gender is quite significant in the book's context and mood.)As a debut novel (really, novella), it is still an impressive and courageous accomplishment. A few wobbly parts, yes, but I am glad I read it, and look forward to watching this author mature.

This book was devastatingly brilliant. Make sure that you put it on your radar for February. Nora, a 16 year old girl, goes missing never to be heard from again. However, this is not about the disappearance itself but the cult of fascination that springs up from the disappearance among the boys in her class. Told as a group narrative this book moves between time and perspective. Sure, there are theories floated as to what happened to Nora but the true power is the long-term effects are played out through the lives of those who knew here. I could not put this book down. It was not, by any means, a gentle read but was often frank and shocking. To me, the mark of a great book is one that unsettles you and remains in your mind for long after. This book accomplishes that.I will be an evangelist for this in 2011.

Twin Peaks meets Then We Came to the End meets Capturing the Friedmans meets the ending of 25th Hour meets the concept of Tralfamadorian time from Slaughterhouse Five.

Language is a powerful tool. It can enrage the timid, soothe a lost crew at sea, and motivate the masses to march. If nothing else, language is a seducer. And from the pen of Hannah Pittard, it certainly does seduce.I love... (no, this is an instance where I choose to type like a freshman girl who picked Bobby Quarterback's pen up from the floor). I love, love, LOVE!!!! Pittard's language. Love it! OMG. Pittard uses words in a way I envy. She's insightful. Poetic. And yet it's all done so subtly. Really quite brilliant. Her craft is strong and I believe, one day, she'll be quite a force in the literary world.The Fates Will Find Their Way is a gorgeous read, but it is missing one vital component: story. No matter how beautiful the sentences come together, without story, it holds little weight. Shakespeare skillfully unveiled language, but what would Romeo and Juliet be without Capulets and Montagues? Without Romeo and Juliet? A year from now, if a friend asks me what The Fates Will Find Their Way is about, I'll probably say, "It's about a missing girl, and uhmm... the guys who... miss her, I guess." And then I'll rave about the language. It probably won't be enough to convince my friend.Pittard has gained my admiration. I look forward to reading more of her work. My sincerest hope is that her next offering is a bit heavier in story. Pittard's words + Memorable Story = OMG!!!!!!!