Jack Shanley is a well-known artist living in New York.
Deborah was a dancer until she became pregnant with their son, Simon, who is
now fifteen. Four years later, Kay was born. (Somewhere in there, Simon
divorced his first wife and married Deborah.) Now Deborah runs the household
and teaches dance classes, Simon and Kay have school, and Jack spends a lot of
time at his studio preparing for his next show. Such is life in their 16th
floor apartment. Then comes the day that the building’s doorman sends a box addressed to Deborah upstairs with Kay. Since the box flaps are just tucked in, Kay can see the pink paper with letter addressed to her mother. In her room she reads the letter, then looks at the stack of papers underneath it – printed emails between her dad and a woman she doesn’t know, about things this preadolescent is just beginning to understand.
So begins the unraveling of this family that had begun on shaky legs some 16 years before. As long as Deborah was the only one to know of her husband’s infidelity, the family could pretend everything was okay. Now that Kay and Simon know (Kay shares), the divide between the children and their father becomes
Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont chronicles the dissolution of a family, the fragmentation of relationships, and how interdependent the individuals are to achieving group harmony. Heavy and depressing at times, this book is well-written, with an important underlying message. Will it achieve the popularity necessary to land a place on a best-seller list? Hard to say. But it is still a worthwhile read.
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