Shelter in Place: A Novel

by Alexander Maksik

Joe March has just graduated and is on top of the world, but his life implodes when he starts to suffer the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Soon after, his mother kills a man she's never met. Sent to jail, Joe and his father move to be closer to her. There, Joe falls in love with a woman named Tess as all their lives take on the slow routine of prison visits and beer at a local bar. But from behind bars, Joe's mother is becoming a hero, her crime considered an act of righteous rebellion. Spurred on by her example, Tess enlists Joe in a secret, violent plan that will forever change their lives.

• ISBN10: 1609453646
• ISBN13: 9781609453640
• Publish Date: 29 September 2016 (first published 13 September 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 18 October 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Europa Editions
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

This was a good read, but definitely not a quick or easy one. We're introduced to Joe, a young man living his young, carefree life, tending bar in an ocean-side town in the Pacific Northwest. Then he meets Tess, who seems to be his missing puzzle piece. Together they fall into an easy summer rhythm, working, playing, loving. A rhythm that is only interrupted by 2 things -- Joe's emerging bipolar disorder, which he refers to as a bird (the ups) and the tar (the downs), and some upsetting news. Joe's mother has killed a man with a hammer (not a spoiler, it's in the back cover copy).

Joe sadly leaves Tess behind and moves to be with his father near his mother in prison. Life falls into another uneasy rhythm of work and visiting his mother, until Tess reappears. It seems that maybe life can be happy again, even as Tess becomes enamored of his mother and her crime and begins to make some plans of her own.

The story moves back and forth between Joe's past, living with Tess, and Joe's present, where Tess has disappeared from his life. We don't know why she's gone, only that she is. Joe is struggling, both with her absence and his continued mental illness. I think Maksik does a good job of portraying his illness through the writing, swinging from mania to a deep depression. It's not unusual to wonder if he's just going to take his own life.

The book takes it's time getting to the the crux -- what Tess's plan is and how it affects their lives -- but I didn't find it to be unpleasant. I also that the underlying source of Tess's rage, the mistreatment of woman, is a subject that is coincidentally more timely now than it was in the nineties (the early part of the timeline) or 2016 (when this was published).

Overall, I think this was a good read but you have to be patient with it. It meanders a lot and the ending may be considered unsatisfactory to some, but I think it was worth the journey.