Review of “Before Closure” by Shadley Grei

Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)

Hmm... so this is an interesting book to review, largely because we got lost in it--for better or for worse.

By "lost" we literally mean bewildered and confused. We rarely get bewildered and confused about a book. We read hundreds of books a year and generally have above-average reading comprehension. We're also no strangers to non-linear narratives or novels with multiple different perspectives. But there's something about this book that felt like trying to put the shattered, fragmented pieces of a broken window back together. They say that no glass shatters exactly the same way, so putting it back together is a tall order. It's likely to cut you. And, well, there are those of us that rather just throw their hands up and sweep up the glass. And perhaps that's the point.

Before Closure by Shadley Grei is built around people trying to reconstruct lives that have already cracked apart. Some pieces still fit. Some have been lost. Some are sharp enough to draw blood when touched. And even if everything could somehow be placed back where it belonged, the fractures would remain visible.

The novel begins when Carol Parker abandons the life she has built with her husband, Clayton. After nearly forty years of marriage, she writes a letter, packs two bags, and leaves their Iowa farm.

Carol doesn't leave because Clayton is abusive, unfaithful, or cruel. In fact, she acknowledges that she loves him and has always felt secure in his love. But, as the book memorably observes, even a security blanket can smother someone.

Seven months later, Clayton remains convinced that Carol will return on Sunday, their fortieth wedding anniversary. His adult children, Frankie and Jules, are much less certain. The weekend leading to that anniversary becomes the central timeline of the novel, with the family preparing for Carol’s possible return while each member quietly struggles with a different form of abandonment.

Clayton is waiting for the woman who left him.

Frankie is recovering not only from his mother’s disappearance, but also from discovering that his longtime partner, Shane, was cheating on him. The breakup cost Frankie more than a romantic relationship. Shane had two sons, Brady and Toby, and Frankie had become one of their parents in every meaningful way. When Shane disappeared from Frankie’s life, the children disappeared with him.

Jules appears to be the strongest and most stable member of the family. She has a husband, Damon, a young daughter named Sophie, and enough determination to take control of Frankie’s coffee shop while he retreats from his former life. However, the return of Joshua Myles, her high-school boyfriend who has since become a famous country singer, forces Jules to question whether she is truly content or merely better at hiding her desire to escape.

That's the plot. Or, at least, that is the closest thing the novel has to a central plot.

On paper, it is fairly straightforward: a family spends three days waiting to see whether the wife and mother who abandoned them will return for a major anniversary. That gives the story a clear deadline, a powerful emotional question, and enormous potential for tension.

In practice, however, the novel surrounds that story with enough memories, romances, supporting characters, personal histories, jokes, philosophical reflections, symbolic objects, and emotional diversions to make the central narrative surprisingly difficult to locate.

The book initially appears to be setting up a mystery, which always presents some level of intrigue and excitement by default. We all like solving things.

Well, this book presents a lot of mysteries to potentially solve:
Where did Carol go? What exactly did her letter say? Why does Clayton refuse to let Frankie and Jules read it? Why is he so certain that she will return on Sunday? Is Carol traveling alone? Has she contacted anyone? Does she genuinely intend to come back?

Those questions naturally pull readers forward. The problem is that Before Closure is not especially interested in answering most of them.

Carol’s disappearance is not really a mystery to solve. It is a wound the other characters must learn to live around. The book is less concerned with where Carol went than with what her absence exposes in the people she left behind.

And unless you figure that out or accept that, you might find yourself as frustrated as we were reading this.

We constantly found ourselves asking things like:

What does this thing have to do with the other thing?

How do these plot threads connect, if at all?

Where is this going?

What’s the point?

Can we get on with it already?

Are we going to get to it sometime this century? Or at least before our 40th anniversaries? Please?

Eventually, some of those questions receive answers. Others do not. More importantly, the pieces often connect thematically rather than narratively. That distinction is important.

Not every character, memory, romance, or extended backstory directly advances the central plot. We don't expect them to. Instead, many of them reflect different forms of loss, abandonment, reinvention, regret, or second chances. One person is grieving a dead spouse. Another is recovering from divorce. Someone else is wondering whether domestic stability has become a cage. Another character is trying to determine whether a broken relationship deserves another chance or should finally be buried.

In that sense, the novel’s many scattered pieces do belong to the same broken window. The trouble is that understanding why the pieces belong together does not necessarily make the process of assembling them any less exhausting. And, gosh, this normal-sized book can come across as needlessly exhausting.

Before Closure repeatedly pauses its main story to provide lengthy memories, histories, and explanations. A supporting character cannot simply enter the scene without the narrative occasionally opening a door into her childhood, former marriage, greatest tragedy, current relationship, and collection of emotional scars. An object cannot merely sit in a room without threatening to unlock another memory. A coffee mug, crack in the wall, empty house, string of Christmas lights, muddy boot, old photograph, or broken-down vehicle may become the starting point for another reflection.

Look, you could say similar things about Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino, which many consider a masterpiece and one of their favorite movies. We don't particularly agree, but you do you. The consensus seems to disagree with us. Some people like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Some people like pineapples on their pizza. For some people, Neapolitan ice cream and meat lovers pizza are as exotic as their taste buds are willing to go.

This book often seems disjointed, fragmented, and unfocused. One moment, they're talking about Heidi's Wonder Woman underwear, the next moment you've got a homosexual pairing hoping the other falls and "breaks [their] dick" for infidelity. Ok, honestly, that was a genuinely funny line. The other one that got a laugh out of us was, "I can hear my heartbeat in my vagina." Yeah, this book can get really crude, but it's funny at times. We didn't much like the on-stage joke Thea makes about ducks gang raping each other (what she calls a "Trepidation"), but... whatever... We're not gonna let some petty prudishness completely derail our enjoyment of the book.
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There is some genuinely excellent writing buried in all this broken glass. Grei has a gift for capturing complicated emotions through unexpected images, contradictions, and little observations that can stop readers in their tracks.

For example, we loved the simple but powerful explanation for why Carol could feel trapped inside a loving marriage:

“But a security blanket can still smother you.”

Then there is this haunting description of Carol crossing the line between her old life and whatever comes next:

“She dropped the pen into the mug and stared at it until all shapes melted into watercolor edges, and the life she was standing in started to feel like a memory.”

That is an excellent sentence. Carol has not even left the house yet, but she is already emotionally looking back at her life as something that has ended.

We were also struck by the moment when Frankie looks at his father and becomes painfully conscious of his age, sorrow, and mortality:

“He looks both fragile and indestructible. Like the rest of us, Frankie’s father was an hourglass filled with broken dreams and burning time.”

“An hourglass filled with broken dreams and burning time.”

Dang.

That image stayed with us. It captures both the apparent strength of a parent and the terrifying realization that time is steadily carrying that parent away.

The relationship between Frankie and Clayton is described beautifully elsewhere:

“So, they became men—father and son—who loved each other as best they could from opposite sides of fear.”

That line says an enormous amount about how two people can sincerely love one another while still remaining emotionally separated by everything they are afraid to say.

The smaller moments can be just as effective. When Jules comforts Frankie without making a production out of it, Grei writes:

“She taps his finger with her own like the smallest of hugs.”

That is tender, restrained, and incredibly easy to picture.

We also admired the book’s description of depression. Frankie is not looking for medication to erase every feeling or magically transform his personality:

“He wasn’t seeking numbness, only a bottom that didn’t feel bottomless. If your feet can’t find the ground, you have nothing to push up from.”

That might be one of the book’s best passages. It explains depression without reducing it to ordinary sadness. Frankie does not necessarily need someone to pull him all the way out. He first needs to feel something solid beneath him so he can begin pushing upward himself.

There is also a bittersweet scene in which Jules looks at an old family photograph and feels:

“Gratitude, perhaps, that her mother froze this moment in time and handed it to her to cherish.”

The photograph preserves something real and happy, even though Jules now knows that the person behind the camera was already capable of making happiness feel uncertain. Memories do not become false merely because the people inside them eventually change, leave, or hurt one another.

Of course, not all the memorable writing is poetic.

When Frankie remembers confronting Shane after catching him cheating, he places a hand against:

“The chest he had fallen asleep on at least 100 times but now felt like a mattress of nails.”

Ouch.

That is a terrific way of turning something that once represented comfort and safety into something painful and unrecognizable. It also fits the novel’s larger theme: the places and people that once felt like home can become hostile almost overnight.

And when Shane later attempts to justify his behavior through a painfully rehearsed speech filled with therapy language, the narration observes:

“Shane sounds like he is delivering this speech like a shitty child actor in community theater.”

Yeah, that one got us.

It is rude, crude, and completely brutal. It is also perfect for the scene because Shane seems more concerned with performing personal growth than demonstrating it.

Finally, Mona expresses what may be the entire emotional point of the novel when she tells Clayton:

“I wish for you to be waiting for someone who chooses you.”

She clarifies that she wants Clayton to feel “like a priority and not an option.”

That is what Clayton, Frankie, and even Jules must eventually confront. How long should someone wait for a person who is unwilling or unable to choose them? How much of your life should remain suspended while you wait for another person to return, apologize, explain themselves, or finally love you properly?

And what happens if that explanation never comes?

That is where the title gains its meaning. These characters cannot remain frozen until someone hands them a clean, satisfying ending. They must find a way to continue living before closure, perhaps without ever receiving closure at all.

So, no, this book is not empty, shallow, or poorly written. Its greatest problem may be the exact opposite: it is overflowing. It has too many memories, too many diversions, too many emotional histories, too many symbolic objects, and too many characters competing for attention. The talent is clearly there. What the novel needed was greater focus and considerably more restraint.

Before Closure is messy, crude, funny, tender, frustrating, insightful, and deeply human. We may have spent much of it wondering where the story was going, but we cannot deny that several of its characters, ideas, and images stayed with us after we arrived.​

We occasionally wanted to throw up our hands and sweep away all that shattered glass.

But some of those broken pieces caught the light beautifully.

Check it out on Amazon!