The King's English Bookshop

Ask Again, Yes: A Novel (Hardcover)

By Mary Beth Keane

$27.00

ISBN: 9781982106980

Availability: On Our Shelves Now

Published: Scribner - May 28th, 2019

As in Shakespeare’s famous play, a boy and a girl from two houses ‘alike in dignity’ (in this case the homes of two Irish cops whose fates have turned these next-door neighbors against one another) fall in love, into that seemingly boundless sea of passion the bard described so brilliantly and that Keane too captures perfectly, achingly—but differently, not ending the bloom of perfect teenage love with death but instead following its course over years so that what might well become a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion develops at a slow boil. As the lives of Kate and Peter play out, so too do the lives of their parents and relations, from the time of their own blooming loves through the shoals and riptides of their respective marriages. This is a gripping, wise and bighearted novel whose characters come alive on the page, wowing the reader. I consumed it with a lump in my throat and a fast-beating heart and, in the end, found my hope in humanity renewed by that alchemy that can be found in only the best fiction.