Book Review: "Attachments" by Jeff Arch
“Attachments” by Jeff Arch
Bookshop | Kindle
Thank you for Spark Press for the ARC.
Publisher Synopsis: At a boarding school in Pennsylvania, a deathbed request from the school's dean brings three former students back to campus, where secrets and betrayals from the past are brought out into the open--secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on the dean's eighteen-year-old son.
Told in alternating points of view and time frames, Attachments is the story of best friends Stewart ("Goody") Goodman, Sandy ("Pick") Piccolo, and Laura Appleby, the girl they both love. The friends meet in 1972 at a boarding school in coal-country Pennsylvania where they encounter Henry Griffin, the school dean, whose genuine fatherly interest and deep human bond with them is so strong that when he has a severe stroke almost twenty years later, he uses what could be his last words ever to call out their names.
Attachments is a puzzle--and the only one who knows how all the pieces fit is in a coma. In the process, longtime secrets are unearthed, revelations come out into the open, and Young Chip Griffin is about to learn something he may or may not be able to handle.
Rating (out of 5): 3.25
Review: I really wanted to like this one more than I did. And it’s not even that I disliked it per se—I guess for some reason I was expecting more Teens Behaving Badly at Boarding School™️, and that isn’t what this is. There are flashbacks to the three main characters (Laura, Pick, and Goody) in school in the ‘70s, but the main storyline and conflict takes place in “present day” (1990).
Arch’s writing is lovely; he’s most well-known for the “Sleepless in Seattle” screenplay. Here, in his debut novel, we really get inside each of the characters’ heads alternately, which creates an empathetic storyline but also spoils the central secret pretty early on (at least in my case). The dialogue is great but what I really connected with was the internal thoughts of each character, learning their motivations.
The love triangle was believable and realistic, but I suppose I had a hard time accepting that Goody (the scorned party) would just up and leave boarding school and go live in a monastery. Where were his caretakers??? (His father had passed away.)
There were also some excellent supporting characters, namely one of Chip’s classmates in the "present-day” storyline, and Pick’s mafia restauranteur father.
There’s not a lot of action here, but if you appreciate sharp dialogue and character-driven stories, I think you’ll like this one.
TL;DR: A finely drawn love triangle that demonstrates the long-lasting ties friendship can have, with themes of grief and loss woven in as we get inside the characters’ heads.
If you liked this, try:
“Friends and Strangers” by J. Courtney Sullivan (Bookshop | Kindle) (Moira’s review here)
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