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Reviewed by Jon Michael Miller for Readers' Favorite
Lunch Tales: Teagan by Lucille Guarino is the second in a projected four-book series on sisters in a small-town suburb of New York City. The setting is contemporary, and the story covers a dramatic one-year-or-so period in Teagan’s life. She is an educated woman in her mid-thirties, working as an accountant in a prestigious law firm. The suspense and realism of the action are heightened by the author’s expertise in writing in first person, present tense, as if the story is happening exactly as we read and told directly to us by the main character, Teagan herself. She is married to a policeman and they have adopted a black child into their large Italian family, the adoption taking place at the time of the child’s birth. Much of the story has to do with fertilization and child-rearing issues, and Teagan is a model mother. But tragedy suddenly occurs.
I am impressed by the author's skill in integrating several important themes into one narrative. Besides the issues already mentioned, there are the storylines of recovering from grief, adjusting to new romantic possibilities, small-town quarrels, professional norms, sibling competition, hate mail, single parenthood, and the psychology of love. Lucille Guarino weaves all these complex themes into a compelling tapestry that left me, a struggling writer, breathlessly envious of her mastery, especially at her use of first-person, present-tense narration. The scenes of Teagan's large family get-togethers, raising her son while working full time, recovering from loss, confronting small-town mores, struggling with new feelings, as well as the sense of place, food and drink, and physical intimacy, all add up to everything a reader could want. I also took the liberty of showing Lunch Tales: Teagan to my wife, and she adds her applause here also—a fabulous read!
