The Dependents

By: Katharine Dion

Narrated by: Robert Fass

One of TIME magazine's best summer reads, a "wise" (Entertainment Weekly) and "resplendent" (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut that follows a new widower confronting the truth about his long marriage.

After the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college days, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared, raising their children in a small New Hampshire town and vacationing together at a lake house every summer.

Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him -- and how enigmatic his wife was as well. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew.

Katharine Dion's assured debut moves seamlessly between Gene's present-day journey and the long history of a marriage and friendship. Rich and wonderfully alive, The Dependents is the most moving kind of drama, an intimate glance into the expanse of family life and the way we must all eventually bridge the chasm between what we want to believe and what we know to be true.

Critic reviews

"An eloquent debut about memory, love, grief, and friendship . . . The Dependents moves elegantly from past to present, starting with four college friends whose lives become inexorably linked . . . The talented Dion has written a gorgeously meditative debut about how unfully we live our lives or know ourselves and our loved ones."—Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle

"This is the beach read you'll still be thinking about as the leaves fall...Debut novelist Dion writes like a dream. Or John Cheever crossed with a very insightful feminist."—Kim Hubbard, People

"Dion's wise debut asks compelling questions about memory and grieving...Stunning."—Entertainment Weekly

"Dion's resplendent debut ponders the fickleness of memory and the human propensity for nostalgia and self-doubt."—O Magazine

"Dion's debut is a heartbreaking meditation on the long process that is healing from grief."—Real Simple

"Moving and profound."—Mackenzie Dawson, New York Post

"When this book arrived in the mail, its author, Katharine Dion, was a person unknown to me. Not anymore. The Dependents is a fine debut, full of intelligent writing and free of the canine desire to please that afflicts so much contemporary writing. And yet this book pleases on many levels. I will look for Ms. Dion's work in the future."—Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Middlesex and The Marriage Plot

"This richly textured family drama is a marvel of a novel. With great subtlety and tact, it evokes the love, devotion, and sadness that bind a grieving father to his troubled daughter. Its cumulative power comes from the depth of Dion's entry into her characters and the vividness of her prose that brings them to life. The Dependents is one of the best debut novels I've read in years, and a very auspicious one.—Adam Haslett, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Imagine Me Gone

"The Dependents is a big book, one that grapples with important questions through generations--the way we live now, the way we may have chosen to live then--and the consequences. Dion's intelligence and ambition truly shine through sentence after sentence."—Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women

"The Dependents is a brilliant and absorbing novel that's not afraid to ask the big questions: What is the source of happiness? How do we recover from loss? How much do we really know about the people we love? This is a masterly portrait of grief written by an author of enormous sensitivity and insight."—Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix

Dull, overly long, way overwrought

Yikes, all of the promotional material spoke about soaring prose and vivid descriptions. I'm so mired in them at only 3 hours of listening that i just can't go on. Five more hours of this would be pure torture. I'm looking for story and so far all I have is an overanxious old man who has apparently been an overthinker for his entire life, a snarky adult daughter (and I have NO visual of her), a dear "beautiful" granddaughter, and questionable college friends who stayed tethered for decades. If I were reading this on pages I would have cast it aside long ago. I was on a road trip so tried hard to listen while driving.

Depressing

This story never went anywhere; it just rambled on and on. It was easy to listen to, and the narrator was good. The story itself, though, was lacking much of a plot.

Gene. Please Stop Ruminating

There is no doubt that Katherine Dion is a good writer. Her prose can be quite lovely. The problem, for me, was I could not connect with her main character....Gene Ash. This man was way beyond self reflection. Every moment of his life is scrutinized by him, to a fault. There were some passages I actually laughed out loud because he drilled down and over-explained his feelings and made me feel inpatient. It wasn't a sweet, awakening of insight. It was too much. I wanted to like this book because a lot of the writing and imagery are good.

apparently headlines aren't optional

this was so difficult to get through. I actually was surprised when it ended, as it felt like barely anything happened.

Boring

This was one of the most boring books I have ever read( or listened to).
Since I was driving, I felt like a captive audience .
I understand that the author was trying to make a point about a worthless life, but this guy was so boring and sad. There was nothing that made the story interesting.
Maybe the point was that there are a lot of people who have this type of life, but it was excruciating to have to listen to it minute by minute.
The review I read before I purchased this said there was some hidden past about his wife. That would have been interesting. This was painful.