Motherless by Erin Healy

One of the more unusual novels I’ve ever read, Erin Healy’s Motherless is an intriguing, but not pleasant, read.  This is a challenging story, but I read on trying to make sense of this dysfunctional family and their story as narrated by an almost-dead man.  Filled with guilt over the death of his wife sixteen years earlier, Garrett Becker drives his car into an excavation site to die.  He has long agonized over an affair he had with chocolate shop entrepreneur Sara.  He blames himself, and the affair, for his wife’s death; it is supposed that she drowned in the ocean though a body was never found.  Garrett has great concern for his almost-grown children, Marina and Dylan, and in his ghost-like state, he follows them about.  There is a thread throughout that is eventually tied up in an unexpected twist in the ending.  This story is bizarre and somewhat eerie.  It is often difficult to follow, as we jump about in different times and places from the chocolate store to the chop shop to the construction site.  Although I appreciate the author’s talent to write a suspenseful conclusion, I did not enjoy this novel.   I found the plot confusing and the characters shallow.  Perhaps I should not have been surprised—after all, the story was told by a half-dead man on the edge of eternity. I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher.  I was not required to write a positive review and the words here are my own.