04/13/2020
Treadway’s ruminative latest (after How Will I Know You? ) spans one day in the life of a single mother enduring a terminal cancer relapse. Roberta Chase, 47, tries to tell her son, Will, about her prognosis, but he won’t speak to her until she reveals the identity of his biological father. When Roberta reports for work—she’s a coder in a hospital—her supervisor informs her that she’s been suspended over concerns about her ability to perform while undergoing cancer treatment. Later, she interrupts a break-in at her best friend, Grettie’s house; the intruder, recognizing her condition, takes pity on her. Threaded throughout are Roberta’s memories of her and Will’s relationship through the years, as well as her friendship with Grettie, whom Roberta met in college and whom she adores in a more than platonic way. Roberta’s final chore of the day is to attend a therapy session, where an explosive confrontation unearths the truth about Will’s paternity and shows why Roberta has lied to her child and everyone around her over and over again. While some of Roberta’s relationships with other characters feel underdeveloped, her emotional journey is captured beautifully. Treadway powerfully captures one woman’s attempt to live a meaningful existence despite all that she has endured. (June)
Spellbinding, utterly deceptive in its brevity, Jessica Treadway’s novel packs into a single day one of the most haunting stories I have ever read about the price we pay for the secrets we keep. It’s also about friendship, motherhood, mortality, the meaning of work, and the search for lasting love.” — Julia Glass, National Book Award–winning author of Three Junes and A House Among the Trees
“The Gretchen Question is a powerful and emotional ride with disorienting, satisfying turns and a stunning end. Treadway is masterful.” — Lily King, author of Euphoria and Writers & Lovers
"Roberta’s . . . emotional journey is captured beautifully. Treadway powerfully captures one woman’s attempt to live a meaningful existence despite all that she has endured." — Publishers Weekly
"A thoughtful, and thought-provoking, meditation on love, loss, and legacy." — Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully written... raw... heart-wrenching.” The Portland Book Review
"Moving... delicately paced... The story takes on an urgency that carves an edge into everything.” — Book Trib
Praise for Jessica Treadway: “Jessica Treadway draws her characters into an impossible knot and then expertly teases it apart. The question of what really happened to Joy kept me up half the night.” — Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of State of Wonder
"A writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Treadway combines intense suspense with a smart take on 21st-century adolescence, parenting and justice.” — People “Book of the Week”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel at once this gripping, and this wise, and psychologically complex. As a portrait of motherhood, and an exploration of the limits of knowledge—of others, of one’s self?Lacy Eye probes, devastates, and informs.” — Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point
“Since her debut story collection Absent Without Leave came out in 1992, Jessica Treadway has wowed critics with resonant depictions of flawed, all-too-human characters.” — The Boston Globe
“An intricately plotted psychological thriller." — The Chicago Tribune
"Moving... delicately paced... The story takes on an urgency that carves an edge into everything.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel at once this gripping, and this wise, and psychologically complex. As a portrait of motherhood, and an exploration of the limits of knowledge―of others, of one’s self―Lacy Eye probes, devastates, and informs.
Since her debut story collection Absent Without Leave came out in 1992, Jessica Treadway has wowed critics with resonant depictions of flawed, all-too-human characters.
Spellbinding, utterly deceptive in its brevity, Jessica Treadway’s novel packs into a single day one of the most haunting stories I have ever read about the price we pay for the secrets we keep. It’s also about friendship, motherhood, mortality, the meaning of work, and the search for lasting love.
Beautifully written... raw... heart-wrenching.”
Praise for Jessica Treadway: “Jessica Treadway draws her characters into an impossible knot and then expertly teases it apart. The question of what really happened to Joy kept me up half the night.
A writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.
The New York Times Book Review
Treadway combines intense suspense with a smart take on 21st-century adolescence, parenting and justice.
People “Book of the Week”
An intricately plotted psychological thriller.
The Gretchen Question is a powerful and emotional ride with disorienting, satisfying turns and a stunning end. Treadway is masterful.
Brackenbury writes ‘the body’ well. She captures the urgency and tactile lusciousness of sexual passion; the cocoon-like sense, in the beloved’s presence, of a heightened reality.
New York Times Book Review
2020-03-29
Roberta Chase wakes up one morning and takes inventory of what she has to do that day: go to a work meeting, put away her best friend’s trash cans, and meet with her therapist. But from the beginning, there is an undercurrent of anxiety to every moment of Roberta’s day that suggests these activities, and this day, may not be as mundane as they seem. Told from Roberta's perspective and relying heavily on flashbacks, the novel reveals a great deal about what has brought Roberta to this point—and what may push her to take action, to make a decision she has been avoiding for most of her life. These flashbacks introduce us to the people in her world, especially her best friend, Grettie, and her estranged son, Will. And with each fragment of story, we are faced with a singular rule of life: Every choice we make has consequences. As Roberta proceeds through this day, heading toward a significant face-to-face confrontation, there are hints that she may not be presenting even us, the readers, with the full truth. And then the ending of the book casts doubt on Roberta's honesty, or her grip on reality, in a big way. As a reader, when faced with a possibly unreliable narrator, we wonder: How much can we trust anything they have told us, any piece of their story, if we can’t trust the “reality” of their own ending? But, in the case of Treadway’s novel, this unreliability also speaks to deeper layers of the novel. Roberta is caught in the trap of her own “Gretchen Question” (an allusion to Faust explained within the novel), but there are also larger questions posed by the novel to the reader: How do you qualify and find value in your life when you are nearing the end of it? What do you owe those you leave behind? And what do you owe to yourself?
A thoughtful, and thought-provoking, meditation on love, loss, and legacy.
