April 10, 2023
Raymer’s lively if meandering debut novel (after the memoir Lay the Favorite) follows the ups and downs of a dysfunctional Florida family in the 1990s. Wayward patriarch Calvis Borkoski moves the family from Ohio to Loxahatchee, Fla., where he’s convinced there are greater opportunities. While things seem good at first, with a newly built house and pool, the family fractures after Calvis’s wife, Mary Kay, has an affair. At the center is youngest daughter, C.C., who does her best to lose herself in basketball but is pulled back by family dramas, which grow more dire after Calvis spends all their money. When the oldest child leaves, C.C. is caught in the middle of a violent struggle between her parents. Woven through C.C.’s coming-of-age are scenes with her as an adult, married to a man from a well-off family who leaves her feeling “gentrified” (“You buy one fifty- three-hundred-dollar dresser and before you know it it’s spawned seventeen-hundred-dollar nightstands and a six-thousand-dollar headboard for a bed that you’re not fucking in anymore”). While there isn’t much momentum, Raymer impresses with heart-rending characters and clear-eyed exploration of class differences. Though it’s a little messy, there’s a great deal of life on the page. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books Literary Agency.
June 10, 2024
Raymer's debut novel (after her memoir Lay the Favorite) captures the nostalgia, poignancy, and grim humor of a perennially unlucky dysfunctional middle-class Florida family in the 1990s. When C.C. (named for her father's favorite Canadian Club whiskey) was 12 years old, her used-car salesman father moved the family from Ohio to Florida, seeking a new, easier life. Years later, as C.C. prepares to marry into the wealthy Wellman family, she is plunged into memories of her challenging upbringing. Narrator Rachel Jacobs takes listeners on a journey through C.C.'s childhood, recent past, and present, laying bare the complications wrought by her immature mother, rebelling sister, and unstable father, who struggled with alcohol addiction. Raymer's story painfully captures the effects of generational trauma and the insecurity of living in a family that couldn't seem to stay afloat. C.C.'s rocky coming-of-age demonstrates the ways in which individuals are shaped by parenting, environment, and class. Although this can be an emotional and heavy listen, Jacobs brings a note of hope and wistfulness to her narration, suggesting that a positive future may still be within reach. VERDICT A heartrending, character-driven novel for fans of Kimberly Olson Fakih's Little Miseries.--Elyssa Everling
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