Liars and Saints

 The star of Michelle Huneven's new novel is Sib, who resembles Olive Kitteridge from the Strout stories ("Olive Again," "Tell Me Everything," and so on). Sib becomes an elementary-school teacher, and she feels frustrated by her colleagues' lack of ambition. She has a child, Sandro, who won't speak in class. She has another child who is capable of high-school math. She essentially bribes the math kid: I'll teach you algebra if you get Sandro to talk. Everyone wins. Despite her talent, Sib is flawed. She is an alcoholic, and she shares mean stories at the family dinner table. Having learned the IQ results of every child on the street, she tells her own daughters that they are superior. Sib delights in a tale about the neighbors but does not seem to notice undercurrents of domestic abuse within that tale. Enraged by the world, Sib stops turning up for her annual cancer screening--so she gets cancer. She decides on suicide. Her daughter, Katie, is drown...

Like the crime novel, the addiction story has certain predictable  sign posts . Hitting rock bottom, making amends, struggling with relapse, forming new bonds, reentering the world. There happens to be one Master of the Addiction Novel, and it's Michelle Huneven. Her work hasn't entered Pulitzer territory, and I think that's likely just because it's too smart and real and beautiful. In the absence of a flashy gimmick--commentary on Syria, for example, or the use of a narrator with autism--Huneven has not become a household name. She should be a household name. Huneven's masterwork is "Blame," which is dazzling from start to finish. A bright academic with a drinking problem finds herself assaulting the ear of a child; she is going to perform an at-home piercing, and the procedure goes awry. Shortly thereafter, the protagonist wakes up behind the steering wheel of her car, and she infers that she has mowed down and murdered two pedestrians (or: has she?)...