Love May Fail

In his third novel Quick covers some of the same ground as in The Silver Linings Playbook and The Good Luck of Right Now, focusing on unhappy and broken people finding and making a new sort of family that helps them persevere and even dream. It is also about strange coincidences, fate, a divine plan, or dumb luck, depending on your perspective. (All of those explanations are subscribed to by different characters in the book.) Portia Kane leaves an unhappy marriage to return to her South Jersey home. Along the way she meets a frisky nun, learns how to cope with her hoarder mom, rediscovers her love of hair metal (particularly Mötley Crüe), finds love again, and embarks on a quest to "resurrect" her former English teacher Mr. Vernon, a man literally broken by an old student. The story is told in four parts, each by its own narrator, which serves to give some sharp perspective on the different characters.