The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard / Review

Take the nostalgia of The Wonder Years, add the boys’ club feeling of The Sandlot, and mix in the dark and complicated narration of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and you will arrive at an approximation of the tenor of Hannah Pittard’s debut, The Fates Will Find Their Way.

In a time that must be somewhere in the mid-Atlantic around the mid-1980s, a group of boys comes of age. Yet, in the midst of their growing up, a neighborhood girl, Nora Lindell, an object of their admiration, goes missing on Halloween night. Her fate is never known. The boys — who later become young men, husbands, and fathers — are undeterred in their mental pursuit of her, spending their lives hypothesizing about Nora Lindell’s whereabouts.  But while the boys take them as imaginary gospel truths, they are just that — ever-shifting hypotheses.  Imagining Nora as the wife of an older Mexican man in Arizona, the narrator says,

“Let’s say it was a summer day. One that was uncharacteristically hot, even for Arizona. It was like this — it had to be like this — because heat alone — isolated, confined — can make a person crazy, can turn a good thing bad, if only for a moment. And don’t forget that we like the Mexican. We like him because, like us, he loves Nora. He has cared for Nora and her two babies. So let’s say it was hot. Let’s say there was enough heat to excuse any sing, any crime, any transgression, just this once.”

Beyond the hypothetical tone that permeates the entire novel,  the most fascinating feature of this book is highlighted in the above passage — the use of a first person plural point of view.  While the boys are named, the narrative voice transcends the point of view of any single young man; they are “we” as boys and “we” are adults. The narrative voice is none of them and all of them at the same time, perfectly expressing the follies of childhood from the safe distance of adulthood,

We were sophomores, newly sixteen, a year shy of missing Nora Lindell terribly. We were creeps, jerks, idiots. We were boys; we couldn’t help ourselves.

Partially due to this narrative perspective, the novel lacks a linear plot. This isn’t a murder mystery. It isn’t a tale of boyhood adventure. Each chapter is more like a vignette, capturing a particular incident in this life of this group of friends — moments pushing them from childhood to the acceptance of their adulthood.

And that’s really what the Nora Lindell obsession is about — a hesitance to let go of the things of childhood and grow up.  Preferring to obsess on their youth, the men age and accept adult responsibilities without emotional maturation.

This is a debut that, without a doubt, will catapult Pittard into the literary elite. It’s experimental and fresh without being self-conscious. The writing is impeccable … and exciting.  This is a novel that creeps up on you in all the best ways.  Pre-order a copy of this book! You won’t regret being among the first in your circle to devour this novel, and you’ll feel proud to have “discovered” this rare new talent!

Thanks to Harper Collins for an advance copy of The Fates Will Have Their Way.