A woman searches for her missing father in order to reconcile the many strange and fantastical secrets of her past before she loses herself completely in this deeply profound and magical novel by Audrey Burges.
Keryth Miller is disappearing.
Between the growing distance from her husband, the demands of two teenage daughters, and an all-encompassing burnout, she sometimes feels herself fading away. Actual translucence, though—that’s new. When Keryth wakes up one morning with her hand completely gone, she is frantic. But she quickly realizes two things: If she is disappearing, it’s because her father, an artist with the otherworldly ability to literally capture life in his art, is drawing her. And if he’s drawing her, that means he’s still alive.
But where has he been for the past twenty-five years, and why is he doing the one thing he always warned her not to? Never draw from life, Keryth. Every line exacts a cost. As Keryth continues to slowly fade away, she retraces what she believes to be her father’s last steps through the many homes of her past, determined to find him before it’s too late and she disappears entirely.
In A House Like An Accordian by Audrey Burges, the author has created an insightful and beautiful narrative that delves into the nature of love, relationships, grief and death. From the very beginning, the story pulled me into the story, and I was absorbed by the fantastical and strange secrets of Keryth Miller as she searches for her father.
One of the reasons the story is so powerful is the very nature of what is happening to Keryth. Not only is there distance in her marriage but now she’s literally disappearing. Could there be a better metaphor for what happens at times in marriages, especially to women? In any relationship, there are good times but there are also times you take the other for granted and this novel does a profoundly good job of putting readers into that landscape. And that is only one facet of this amazingly complex story. It also explores what it is to be family and how those ties bind a family together. And as Keryth traces her father, the story shows us how his past and his parents shaped her family as well, as they dealt with loss and grief, the narrative also illustrates how different people try to hold onto loss while others learn to live in the face of that grief.
If you like supernatural stories that are layered, insightful and beautiful, then A House Like an Accordian is for you. It is a joy to read as it flows through time and takes you on a journey of family and love as Keryth searches for her father. But she doesn’t just find him, she also finds herself. Strange and wondrous, this narrative is just phenomenal.
Rating: 5 out of 5 pages.
