Beginning ~ with a big imagination

Beginning

He was an astronaut, he imagined, like in one of those movies; his mission took him to a distant planet on the far reaches of the solar system, Saturn, perhaps, or Neptune.  He was gone a nominal amount of time — three years, maybe five, significant but not interminable — but somehow everyone Jordan Vargas knew on Earth had aged a lifetime while he was in space.

The Celebrants ~ by Steven Rowley, 2023, literary fiction, 320 pages

After their close friend dies unexpectedly just weeks before their 1992 graduation from Berkeley, Jordan, Jordy, Craig, Marielle, and Naomi make a pact to gather in the future if any of them experiences really hard times and needs to be reminded of their friendship and love for one other.

During the next 28 years, the five friends reunite three times to support each other through personal hardships, but the fourth call to assemble is different.  Hope can’t change the outcome of the latest adversity, and their decades-long pact is about to end.  The friends who survived devastation and rebuilt their strength by celebrating life will again have to endure grief, but they will face it together as they have for nearly 30 years, leaving nothing left unsaid.

At its heart, the novel celebrates a deep friendship that endures through loss, years of silence, and even anger, to support and lift each other up when lives fall apart.  The story moves a little slowly as the characters are introduced and the pact explained, but it picks up speed as the pieces of the narrative come together.  Told from multiple perspectives and through several get-togethers spanning decades, the story unfolds bit by bit, allowing readers to gain familiarity with each friend and the importance of their friendship over time.

I see a problem already, with two of the five main characters having similar names:  Jordan and Jordy.  Come on, authors, don't do that to us!  I'm also tired of novels told from multiple perspectives, but maybe I'll give this one a chance.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays