“Life, this up and down life” is on full, multifaceted display in Ethan Joella’s debut novel. A Little Hope begins with a family facing one of life’s greatest tests: a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a cancer within white blood cells. Greg Tyler and his wife, Freddie, are caught up in worry and fear. How do they tell their daughter, Addie, that Greg is sick? What will the next looming doctor’s appointment reveal? The calendar year may be sliding into fall and then winter, but it is just the beginning of a long, unknown road that neither of them wants to take. And they are not the only ones questioning and wrestling. They are so very far from alone.
The small, fictional town of Wharton, Connecticut, is a well-connected community of characters who feel like people you know or people you could be: mothers and sons, wives and husbands, lovers and friends, parents and those soon to be. The cast of characters—Freddie and Greg, Ginger, Luke, Iris, Alex and Kay, Suzette, Damon, Ahmed, Darcy—are honest as they move through the vagaries of love, illness, infidelity, death or disappointment as best they can, searching for a foothold in the midst of all that is happening. Their unceasing thoughts and fickle feelings all strike a familiar and fully human chord.
Joella’s poetic side shines in his moving but never maudlin novel. He captures loneliness, sadness, happiness and anger in all their fleeting hues. He has created a truly intertwined world around the Tylers, portraying their neighbors truthfully yet kindly. From beginning to end, A Little Hope finds the grace of the everyday and homes in on the surprises (both heavy and light) that each day can hold.
Life is both painful and hopeful, but in Joella’s world, it is blessedly more of the latter.
