Lies You Wanted to Hear

July 1, 2013
This debut novel by Boston author Thomson concerns a divorced father who perceives the mother of his two children to be unfit to raise them. During the late 1970s, Boston cop Matt Drobyshev, 28, is set up by his colleague’s wife on a blind date with her oldest friend, Lucy Thornhill, a young woman with “an edge” from a well-to-do family. Lucy had an abortion, after which the father, Griffin Chandler, decided to leave town “to get his head together.” Even though she is still in love with the irresponsible Griffin, she finds Matt “forthright” and “congenial,” and they marry. The marriage derails and the divorce turns acrimonious when Matt fails to gain full custody of the kids. As time passes, the reader’s sympathies align more with Lucy. A well-told narrative of complex characters and their troubled families.

September 15, 2013
First-time novelist Thomson explores the excruciating pain of a marriage gone wrong in this dreary tale stretched out over two decades. In the summer of 1977, two Bostonians are set up on a blind date: Lucy Thornhill, a sensual, free spirit from a privileged background, and Matt Drobyshev, a straight-arrow policeman who grapples with a volatile temper. On the rebound from a passionate fling with the noncommittal Griffin, Lucy feels drawn to the handsome, steady Matt; soon, she and the smitten cop glide effortlessly into marriage and a quiet domestic life in Jamaica Plain. After the births of her two children, Lucy is struggling with postpartum depression and drug use when Griffin reappears, potently seductive. Furious over his wife's affair, Matt pushes for a divorce and sole custody of Sarah and Nathan but is thwarted by the exigencies of family law, which favor the mother. Fearful for his children's safety, he abducts them; under new aliases, they hopscotch across the country before settling in Southern California. Sara and Elliot, as they're now known, grow up in a stable, loving one-parent household, well-adjusted students that believe their mother perished in a house fire when they were toddlers. Elliot eventually enrolls in a music college in Boston, where he stumbles upon Lucy, a divorcee who's never given up hope that she'd see her children again. Thomson writes in clear if pedestrian prose, shifting between Lucy and Matt, but unfortunately, the novel never transcends the dour particulars of its own he said, she said storytelling. As Lucy notes, Matt "was always so sure of himself as a father....I loved my children beyond measure, but I had a hard time finding my rhythm with them, as if mothering were a dance and I had to keep looking down at my feet." Relentlessly grim melodrama, in the vein of Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer.

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September 15, 2013

Lucy and Matt are an unlikely couple. She's a self-absorbed trust-fund baby with a predilection for bad boys; he's a blue-collar, good-guy cop who believes in following the rules. Set up on a blind date, they stumble their way into marriage. Two children later, Lucy spirals back into a destructive relationship with an ex-lover. Matt, in turn, falls into paranoia, convincing himself that Lucy is a danger to her children and that he must take drastic actions to save them. Telling their story in alternating chapters moving back and forth in time, Lucy and Matt share with the reader the truths they never told each other. VERDICT This first novel by an author who studied with the late Andre Dubus slowly builds momentum, ending with a satisfying twist on the theme of why good love can go bad and what redemption can cost.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2013
In this surprisingly effective debut novel (from a 67-year-old author), the story is told from two perspectives. Lucy and Matt meet on a blind date in 1979, and straight-arrow Matt, a police officer, is immediately smitten. Lucy is just coming off a bad breakup with Griffin, the love of her life who left her the day after she got an abortion at his insistence. She sees in Matt a reliable man who makes a nice contrast to her elusive ex. But as the two marry and have two children, their marriage is tested. Lucy suffers from a bout with postpartum depression and comes to resent Matt's cheerful, capable parenting, fearing that she can never measure up to his standards. And that fear proves prophetic when Lucy embarks on an affair with her old boyfriend, eventually asking Matt for a divorce. He takes the kids, alters their identities, and spends years on the run as Lucy grieves for her lost children. Thomson lays out the moral complexities underlying acrimonious divorces, taking care to make each side credible, but Lucy's plight will win the greater measure of sympathy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)