Reunions
Hearkening back to classics in style, Reunions is a weighty literary novel about revealing encounters with old friends.
In David Adams Cleveland’s verbose literary novel Reunions, former classmates see a familiar face at their reunion, resurrecting a host of memories and jealousies.
While at a fortieth class reunion at Princeton University, four professionally successful and affluent friends—Gini, Bianca, Apolonia, and Annette—encounter Jake Burrage Jr., the event host who mirrors in image and demeanor his father, a fellow student who had a profound and intimate role in their lives. The elder Burrage became the wildly wealthy, reclusive CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and his son’s presence resurrects a host of memories.
For Gini, the first woman CEO of a major publishing company, her torrid love affair with Jake floods back to her. Bianca, a once famous concert pianist, also relives her brief affair with Jake in Venice. Annette, a devout Christian who’s married to a tennis professional, is reminded of using Jake’s brilliance to give her future husband an edge on the court. Apolonia, now a doctor to the famous, recalls Jake’s interest in her illicit affair with a renowned, married Princeton professor. As the past and present collide, memories and conversations unearth revelations about each person, with the foursome also asking the question of whether this young Jake is indeed Jake Jr. or if he’s Jake himself.
Hearkening back to classics in style, the prose mimics the work of Henry James, whose characters and works are referenced throughout its pages. While this style can become loquacious, it also includes simple exposition that moves beyond relaying information and flows like action into the narrative. This display often occurs when the narrative enters the characters’ heads, covering memories in which elegant language reveals people’s emotions and inner selves, as with
a balm dispersing the years, just as that shaft of spring light now elicited her contrition, that warm, wisteria-scented light, like a tender palm stroking her cheek and lips, smoothing out the lines in her brow, tender fingers pressed into her fizzy hair, a whisper in her ear. Time’s luxurious concoction, the essence of which, an admixture of freshly mown grass and trodden earth and fresh sweat, came suddenly pinwheeling back as if to exalt her soul.
The central conflict is also compelling, though it is sometimes shaded by the preponderance of poetic language. Indeed, the book’s forward movement requires patience and acceptance of the reigning style. Much of the first hundred pages is devoted to contextual information about each character and their relation to Jake Burrage; witty, allusion-heavy exchanges do the heavy lifting when it comes to generating momentum early on.
The characterizations sustain interest too. Each person is fully realized and complex, full of insecurities, jealousies, fears, and a host of other deep human emotions. Whether it’s unwinding Annette’s serious religiosity or Apolonia’s secrets, the novel does a good job of attending to each person’s innate human complexities. Still, all lead affluent and academic lives that inform their speech patterns and allusions, resulting in a rarefied atmosphere on the whole.
A slow-burn literary novel, Reunions meshes classical prose with a modernized plot about a college reunion and the secrets it unearths.
Reviewed by
N.T. McQueen
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
