Trompe l’Oeil

Reisman’s second novel (after 2004’s The First Desire) is a slow burn of breaking, healing, and breaking again, in the aftermath of a tragedy. At the start, the Murphys are an ordinary family. Nora and James are a “sparkling couple”: they have three beautiful children and a second house by the beach, in addition to their gorgeous first home in a Boston suburb. But an accident on a vacation in Rome shakes their lives to the core: their youngest daughter, four-year-old Molly, is hit and killed by a car. Slowly, over time, the trappings of the Murphys’ identity slip away. Reisman’s sense of language and lyricism are sharp. But the narrative can sometimes stall, and it is often too subtle and languorous for its own good. Still, with shades of The Ice Storm and Revolutionary Road, Reisman offers a poignant portrait of a family undergoing a gradual, permanent transformation. (May)