The Visitors
Reminiscent of his work in The Hill Road (2005), O’Keeffe’s second book flits easily through time and space to tell the story of two Irish families linked intimately over several generations. Leaving behind his family’s farm in rural Ireland, James Dwyer travels first to Dublin, then to Boston, arriving finally at school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There he receives an invitation to visit a childhood neighbor, Kevin Lyons, now living in New York. James never liked Kevin and is determined to decline the request, but their fathers were best friends, and they are further linked through romantic entanglements with each other’s siblings. Ultimately, James cannot deny the invitation, and the meeting only serves to bind the two together more firmly through shared memories and tragedy. By exploring the characters’ intertwined lives, O’Keeffe shows that we are the sum of our past experiences but that even the same history tells a different story for each of us. He weaves a poignant tale of hope and loss that is colorful and engaging in its detail and highly recommended. --Cortney Ophoff