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For readers of Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Claire Lombardo, Chorus shepherds seven siblings through two life-altering events - their mother's untimely death, and a shocking teenage pregnancy - that ultimately follow them through their lives as individuals and as a family.
The seven Shaw siblings have long been haunted by two early and profoundly consequential events. Told in turns from the early twentieth century through the 1950s, each sibling relays their own version of the memories that surround both their mother's mysterious death and the circumstances of one sister's scandalous teenage pregnancy. As they move into adulthood, the siblings assume new roles: caretaker to their aging father, addict, enabler, academic, decorated veteran, widow, and mothers and fathers to the next generation.
Entangled in a family knot, the Shaw siblings face divorce, drama, and death while haunted by a mother who was never truly there. Through this lens, they all seek not only to understand how her death shaped their family, but also to illuminate the insoluble nature of the many familial experiences we all encounter—the concept of home, the tenacity that is a family's love, and the unexpected ways through which healing can occur.
Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and of the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home.
"Kauffman's luminous latest showcases her knack for delving into the hearts of her characters...The siblings' alliances, particularly that of Jack and Lane, are revealed via vibrant prose, as are family secrets...It adds up to a superbly executed saga." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Kauffman has written a deceptively light tale about the heart of a family healing around a defining loss and siblings sustaining each other through adulthood, with lovely phrases and prose throughout. Though the sections are never weighty, together they form a satisfying story of complicated relationships against the backdrop of a 'beautiful world [with] a forked tongue.' A comforting and pastoral novel." - Kirkus Reviews
"Lovely...Readable and compelling...The novel's arrangement feels meaningful as turning-point moments in the siblings' lives take center stage, one after the other...Kauffman's writing style renders complex dynamics in simple, impactful language and scenes." - Booklist
"Readers...will be happy to see [Kauffman] return with this packed family tale." - Library Journal
"Rebecca Kauffman's compact and ingeniously-arranged Chorus depicts the Shaw family and its long-held secrets with admirable clarity, as well as a sympathetic understanding of the good intentions and misjudgments that give rise to those secrets in the first place. As she guides us through the episodes of the Shaws' lives—each glittering with the mysterious warmth of an heirloom ornament on a Christmas tree—Kauffman makes us freshly aware of how the people most dear to us, like the organs of the body, are hidden simply by virtue of being so vital and so close." - Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief
"Rebecca Kauffman is one of our finest literary architects. With unusual empathy, she drafts complex portraits of people, revealing the humanity present in even the most flawed being. In Chorus, she elegantly charts the nuanced connections and fractures between family members, crafting her story from fleeting moments, shivers of understanding, always illuminating the sweetness and sorrow that exists in even the smallest detail." - David Connerley Nahm, author of Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky
This information about Chorus was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rebecca Kauffman received her MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the author of The Gunners and Another Place You've Never Been, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from rural northeastern Ohio, she now lives in Virginia.
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