Two families, two generations. This is a story about trauma, loss, damage, loyalty, and ultimately love.
Ask Again, Yes is beautifully written. I felt Mary Beth Keane knew her characters and their communities inside and out, and I was able to understand and ultimately accept them all.
An understanding of the impact of early life on the people we become is so evident in the book. This is well observed and expertly shared by the author.
I will remember this book.
Thank you for the opportunity to read and review #AskAgainYes for #NetGalley

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Blurb
A gripping and compassionate drama of two families linked by chance, love and tragedy

Gillam, upstate New York: a town of ordinary, big-lawned suburban houses. The Gleesons have recently moved there and soon welcome the Stanhopes as their new neighbours.

Lonely Lena Gleeson wants a friend but Anne Stanhope - cold, elegant, unstable - wants to be left alone.

It's left to their children - Lena's youngest, Kate, and Anne's only child, Peter - to find their way to one another. To form a friendship whose resilience and love will be almost broken by the fault line dividing both families, and by the terrible tragedy that will engulf them all.

A tragedy whose true origins only become clear many years later . . .

A story of love and redemption, faith and forgiveness, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood - villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so.

A story of how, if we're lucky, the violence lurking beneath everyday life can be vanquished by the power of love.
REVIEW
This story is about the importance of family and commitment and hard work and facing problems. The Gleeson Family wrap you in their warmth and routines comparing to Peter Stanhope and his family - a totally different family structure. It demonstrates how we are all a product of our upbringing but also teaches how we can deal with problems we have through no fault of our own.
I was wrapped into this community and found myself mentally trying to support them through adversities. A powerful tale of growing and forgiveness and love.

This is a solid read, demanding full attention and not a book you can lightly skip through.

Moving out of the city, newlyweds Lena and Francis look forward to settling into their new home in the suburbs and raising a family there. When another young couple move into the house next-door, Lena makes friendly overtures but finds herself swiftly rebuffed. However, as both their children grow up, their lives are bound to overlap and mingle - with unforeseen consequences for them all.

This is a packed read. Full of information and detail, it's one I found myself really absorbed into in a very short time. Not only did I like the characters and found that they interested me, I was also interested in each of them and where it was all heading. Could I have guessed? No, definitely not. This is very much a family saga but with lots of extras and I found it both mysterious and surprising, holding my focus all the way through. If you love a good saga, then you can't go far wrong with this one. It's certainly brought Mary Beth Keane to my attention and I'll be keeping an eye out for any future novels from her. I consider this easily a four star read.

My thanks to publisher Michael Joseph for my copy via NetGalley. All stated opinions are both honest and entirely my own.

I enjoyed this book with two families intertwining with each other. It did take a second attempt to read it all.

Powerful, sweeping novels are like buses aren’t they? Nothing for ages and then boom! Loads of them. 2019 has been a great year for fiction and Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane is up there with the best of them.

This is a striking and stirring novel about family, love, loyalty and mental health. It had everything I love in a book; strong writing, a sprawling inter-generational story and a plot which examines humanity and human nature.

It begins in the 1970s with Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope meeting as rookies in the NYPD and striking up an immediate friendship. They both move to Gillam, a town in upstate New York and become neighbours. Francis’ wife, Lena hopes that she and Anne, wife of Brian can become friends, but when Anne rebukes her offers Lena finds herself isolated with her young children and Francis’ friendship with Brian stutters to a halt. It is only when her youngest Kate becomes friends with Peter, son of Brian and Anne that the two families, despite living next door to one another, become linked. When something catastrophic happens it reverberates for both families for decades to come, and Mary Beth Keane takes us on a journey through the lives of these two families and how this event impacted upon them.

It is a beautifully sad novel which I found hugely affecting. This event (I know I am being cryptic but you won’t find any spoilers here), is shocking and raw and tears Kate and Peter, who are as thick as thieves, apart. I was fully immersed in the lives of Kate and Peter, watching as they grow up and find their feet in adulthood. Their lives are forever marred by the events that took place when they were children, scarring them both in different ways.

Mary Beth Keane writes intimately about the long lasting effects and some passages are unbearably sad but it never veers into mawkishness. It is delicately and eloquently handled with moments which took my breath away. It deals with some huge subject matters, none more so than mental health and does so with aplomb. It is challenging and upsetting but it is very, very powerful and sensitively handled.

This book features some absolutely exquisite writing which builds a world filled with love, pain and living, breathing characters. Mary Beth Keane is immensely talented, cleverly playing with our perceptions, challenging our preconceptions and ensuring that our sympathy and alliances are constantly moving. Life isn’t linear, it ebbs and flows and people aren’t always 100% good 100% of the time as she expertly shows with our protagonists in Ask Again, Yes. I may have loved them but I didn’t always like them.

I can’t overstate how invested I became in Ask Again, Yes. It really moved me and I was completely enthralled. Every time I put it down I had to take a few seconds to readjust to the real world. I still can’t quite believe that Peter and Kate aren’t real to be honest and I feel a bit bereft that it is all over. This is one of those books that I wish I could read again for the first time and has left me with a major book hangover. A solid 5 stars from me, Ask Again, Yes comes highly recommended.

As with most traumatic events, there is 'before' and there is 'after'. Mary Beth Keane explores the lives of two neighbouring families, connected through the fathers' police careers and their children’s friendship, when their lives are ripped apart by a violent event.
What direction can their lives take now? And is there any space for forgiveness, understanding and reconciliation? Touching, heartbreaking and moving, this is an engaging novel which takes readers through the darkest of times yet manages to maintain a light enough touch to remain hopeful.
An excellent cast of characters, flawed yet likeable. Recommended.

Keane does a brilliant job of evoking the lives of two families whose paths become tragically intertwined. I loved the way this story was told, with changing POVs that often meant you received information about one or more of the characters third hand. All the relationships felt very real - often strained and complex, but always loving. The story grapples with some big issues - mental health, grief, alcoholism, finding your place in the world, forgiveness - but it does it with such a light touch that you barely notice and just revel in the gorgeous prose. A writer to watch.

This is a good book but not quite at the level of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere. I enjoyed reading it but felt none of the characters were ever truly fleshed out.

This is a fantastic, epic family drama following the lives of two neighbouring families in New York over the course of more than 40 years. Engrossing and moving with wonderful characters. Don't miss this incredible book.

Interesting, poignant, unusual read. Two families, their lives, their loves, their flaws and their tragedies. Maybe you have to hit rock bottom, to experience the unbearable to appreciate what you have

This is the story of two families. The Gleesons and the Standhopes are not only neighbours but Francis and Brian work together. They are police officers. Brian's wife, Anne has mental health issues. The families don't really get along. Anne hates her son Peter's relationship with the Gleesons daughter, Kate. A horrific tragedy occurs and we follow both families for years after the event to see how the developments affected their lives.

The story covers over forty years. Be warned its heartbreaking at times. There is so much I could and want to say but I don't want to spoil it for other readers. The characters are true to life. The pace is set just right. The two families couldn't be any more different to each other. I loved this book from beginning to end and I do recommend this book.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Penguin Michael Joseph and the author Mary Beth Keane for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A satisfying family saga with well drawn characters I came to really care about and, although we parted with a sense of optimism about their future, I was sad to say goodbye!

A very well written and compassionate family saga. It spans over four decades in the lives of the Gleeson and Stanhope families.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope meet when they join NYPD and end up living next door to each other in the suburbs. The adults aren’t close but the children form a strong friendship. However once night a tragic event changes everything and the families are torn apart. Kate and Peter's friendship is scuppered and they lose touch until reconnecting years later. The events of the tragic night still impact their lives and they face difficult choices.
The book navigates relationships, tragedy, addiction and mental illness. An enjoyable read and recommended.

This is a well written study of family life; beginning in the 1970’s when two rookie police officers first meet. It is hard not to become embroiled in the events which overshadow the police officers and their families. All issues are sensitively approached and although bleak at times there always seemed to be a way forward.
From reading the blurb I was expecting a different type of story but I have been pleasantly surprised by the turn of events the story took.

This is yet another book that has left me hoping that the characters have a good life after the story ends. This is certainly moving and perhaps a bit heartbreaking in places depending on your personal background. There are some pretty strong characters here but for me it was all about Peter and he had my emotions all over the place while watching his life unfold.

‘Ask Again, Yes’ covers forty years in the lives of two Irish-American families in New York. Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, their wives Lena and Anna, and their children, live next door to each other in the suburbs. For a while the men work together as policemen, with a picture of their wife and a prayer card to St Michael tucked into their caps. If they hope that their families develop a warm neighbourly friendship, it is not to be. Haunted by what she ran away from in Ireland, Anna Stanhope loses a baby and the familial tendency to mental illness (the one which led to shameful unconsecrated graves in the homeland) crystallises. Her lonely and frightened son Peter focuses his ambitions to marrying Kate, the Gleesons’ youngest daughter.
One chaotic evening everything falls apart. The Stanhopes cleave. The Gleesons cling. The years pass.
We are privy to what is unspoken between them. Families who don’t talk about anything real, who tiptoe around their feelings, dusting around the elephant in the room, somehow get older, finding different dysfunctions to manage their unexplored anguish. Only crises provoke real understanding, and even then it’s contained and constrained by an emotional inarticulacy that’s painful to read. Somehow, though, there’s a beauty in it. Understanding arrives decades after it might have done, but it does arrive.
‘Ask Again, Yes’ has echoes Anne Tyler and Kent Haruf, but its soul is of the Irish immigrant experience. Even if that's not our story, we know and recognise the family who stays together - or falls apart - without ever raising a voice, even after the worst happens. A memorable novel.

This is a genuinely lovely book! I was so excited to read it and it did not disappoint. This book traces the story of two families over many decades of their lives. The characters are beautifully developed, I felt really invested in their story and feel slightly bereft that it has now ended and I don’t get to see what will happen next. The storyline is engrossing and moves gently through the years. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who fancies a book about life, the ups and downs and the importance of family.

This is a really gripping and moving family saga, very reminiscent, as others have said, of the novels of Anne Tyler. The story covers forty plus years in the lives of the Stanhope and Gleeson families, particularly the childhood sweethearts Peter and Kate and Peter's mother Anne. The characters on the page are all interesting and relatable as they make mistakes, struggle and fail, learn to compromise and make the best of what they have. I felt the book had an almost old-fashioned but very powerful message about love and loyalty within families and especially within marriage.

The character of Anne Stanhope is fascinating and beautifully written, enabling a slow shift in the reader's sympathy towards her even as she remains essentially inscrutable. With other character arcs I felt a little frustrated at times, certain central characters seemed to almost dissolve through the passage of the book. That is a minor gripe however about a very well-written and uplifting family saga.

I really enjoy family dramas and saga’s so I had high hopes for this book. It mostly lived up to my expectations. The characters are well written and fleshed out they feel like family or close friends. I found it strange that each character is created with love and sensitivity. This is unusual and I found it odd at first. I’m so used to reading books where there is at least one horrible character. Ask Again, Yes is the opposite. It reminds me a lot of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. The book takes an unexpected, violent turn midway which shocked me a little and has consequences for the rest of the book. The book is quite slow to start but well worth sticking with. I just loved the way the author shone a light on families. I also loved the way the tragedy that splits the friendship between the two families is constantly re-examined and reassessed by the characters as they try and make sense of what’s happened. The book is much darker than I expected and there’s a sense from page one that something unpleasant lurks just beneath the surface.

Ask Again, Yes is the story of two families who are neighbours in suburban New York in the 1970s. The two male heads of the houses, Francis and Brian, work in the New York City police. Francis’s wife, Lena, is unhappy with the move to this quiet town in the suburbs and misses being in the city. She is very happy when Brian and Anne move next door but then sad as Anne seems to want to keep herself to herself and does not want to socialise. Their two children, Kate and Peter, are close in age though and quickly become childhood friends. Peter’s mother, Anne, carries on being aloof and very private all though Peter’s childhood and seem very anxious. And then a terrible violent act happens that tears the two families apart just as Kate and Peter become teenagers and their friendship is deepening.

This is a well-written book about how two families deal with the violence that erupted and the long drawn out aftermath as we are brought from the 1970s up to present day with their lives. It is a tale of mental health issues, alcoholism, love and forgiveness. The writing is good but I didn’t especially enjoy reading it at times. While it deals well with some very dark subjects I’m not sure I would have read it if I’ve known more about the subject matter.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Michael Joseph Communciations for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.