Library Journal
(November 15, 2007; 0-312-36965-4; 978-0-312-36965-1)

Broken into hundreds of snapshot sections with titles like "Wrong of Passage" and "How Things Disappear," Royal's fiction debut puts a failing marriage under the microscope. Evanston, IL, native Claire McCloud and her German husband are divorcing after 11 years together (nine of them bad). Claire, a never quite fully employed artist, is so devastated by the dissolution of her marriage that she cannot hold a job and so must take their children shopping for winter clothes at various lost and founds on Chicago's North Shore. The fragments of first-person narration begin with the moving van showing up to remove traces of Claire's oafish ex and jump around from Claire's childhood to her experiences as a young wife and mother to her being driven to bed by depression in the wake of her divorce. Claire's anger, bewilderment, and grief are affectingly described, but some readers may grow impatient with a woman who captivates every man she meets, is good at every artistic endeavor she attempts, and still allows herself and her children just barely to get by. Recommended for larger public libraries. [Reading group guide available at www.ReadingGroupGold.com.-Ed.]-Karen Kleckner, Deerfield P.L., IL Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.