Books like Notes from an Exhibition

At first I wondered if this novel was going to be just another telling of a dysfunctional family where the children return home after the death of a parent and make peace with their past and each other . But this was different - it was definitely not predictable. The center of the story is Rachel Kelly, an artist who is bipolar. The narrative moves back and forth in time, not in chronological order, from multiple points of view - Rachel , her husband Anthony, a stoic and devout Quaker , their four children , and others , each beginning with a description of one of her works. There are poignant moments when her youngest son carries home from the beach stones representing each of the family members and doesn't want to leave any behind even the heavier ones because "it's us." There are sad moments when a traditional birthday celebration with Rachel and each of her children turn out not as happy as we would have hoped . There are learning moments as I knew very little about Quakerism. Their individual stories unfold slowly through their chapters as well as those of their siblings and parents ,and reveal how they have been affected by their mother , their wife and how they were inevitably affected by her mental illness, by her art and creatively. It is just as much their story as it is Rachel's. There are things we don't know for a while. We know little about Rachel's past and neither does her family until more than halfway through. We don't know until close to the end what happened to Petroc and for most of the book we know little about her daughter Morwenna, who has inherited her mother's talent as well as her illness. This was a compelling read for me because from the beginning I wanted to know these things and to understand these characters. It's not an easy subject matter to portray, but Gale has elegantly done so. This is the first book I have read by Gale and I will almost certainly read more.Thanks to Open Road Media for making available this previously published novel , which I may not have found if it were not made available on NetGalley.