Genre Fiction
![Alison Fairbrother - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_alison_fairbrother.jpg)
The Catch: A Novel
A young woman searches for the truth about her father-and the secrets of her family-in this electric debut novel.
"This big-hearted debut absolutely crackles with smarts."-Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
Two years out of college, Ellie Adler has a job in journalism, an older lover, and a circle of smart friends. Her beloved father, James, who has children from three marriages, unites the family with his gentle humor and charisma, but Ellie has always believed she is her father's favorite. When he suddenly dies, she finds herself devastated by the unexpected loss. Then, at the reading of his will, she learns that instead of leaving her his prized possession-a baseball that holds emotional resonance for them both-he has left her a seemingly ridiculous, even insulting gift. Worse, he's given the baseball to someone no one in the family has ever heard of.
In her grief, Ellie wonders who could have possibly meant more to her father than she did. Setting out to track this person down, she learns startling information about who her father really was and who she herself is becoming. Moving, witty, and unforgettable, The Catch is a story of the gifts we're given over the course of a lifetime, by family, friends, and strangers-the ones we want and the ones that catch us unawares.
"This big-hearted debut absolutely crackles with smarts."-Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
Two years out of college, Ellie Adler has a job in journalism, an older lover, and a circle of smart friends. Her beloved father, James, who has children from three marriages, unites the family with his gentle humor and charisma, but Ellie has always believed she is her father's favorite. When he suddenly dies, she finds herself devastated by the unexpected loss. Then, at the reading of his will, she learns that instead of leaving her his prized possession-a baseball that holds emotional resonance for them both-he has left her a seemingly ridiculous, even insulting gift. Worse, he's given the baseball to someone no one in the family has ever heard of.
In her grief, Ellie wonders who could have possibly meant more to her father than she did. Setting out to track this person down, she learns startling information about who her father really was and who she herself is becoming. Moving, witty, and unforgettable, The Catch is a story of the gifts we're given over the course of a lifetime, by family, friends, and strangers-the ones we want and the ones that catch us unawares.
Editorial Reviews
"The Catch is a thoroughly entertaining and absorbing book by a writer who is brilliantly funny. I laughed, I cried, I thought about life. I now want to read whatever Alison Fairbrother writes."-Susan Minot, author of Why I Don't Write: And Other Stories
"This big-hearted debut absolutely crackles with smarts-the sentences are crisp, the story unfurls, the characters are just right. The Catch is a delightful read about love, loss, and the vulnerability of growing up."-Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
"In this wonderful, wholly absorbing family drama with a mystery at its beating heart, Alison Fairbrother asks, What are we owed by the people we love? The answers she provides are funny, sad, complex, and always surprising. I loved this book and you will too."-Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
"The Catch is about the mysteries left behind in death, but, importantly, it is just as much about the mysteries of living and the discoveries made while aching and searching and loving. This is a satisfying and wise novel by an author I will happily follow anywhere."-Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and No One Is Here Except All of Us
"The Catch is an intimate family drama about secrets and what we are willing to do for, or hide from, those we love most. Alison Fairbrother's writing makes her characters, with all their flaws and weaknesses and desires, feel like people you know. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Washington, D.C., The Catch unfurls in entirely unexpected directions and had me utterly engaged from the very first page."-Anton DiSclafani, author of The After Party
"Fairbrother's debut is characterized by its elegant yet comfortable prose-readers will feel at home with Ellie as if experiencing the story's events along with her. The mystery drives the plot, but Ellie's personal growth is the heart of the novel. . . . This layered coming-of-age story will appeal to fans of...
"This big-hearted debut absolutely crackles with smarts-the sentences are crisp, the story unfurls, the characters are just right. The Catch is a delightful read about love, loss, and the vulnerability of growing up."-Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
"In this wonderful, wholly absorbing family drama with a mystery at its beating heart, Alison Fairbrother asks, What are we owed by the people we love? The answers she provides are funny, sad, complex, and always surprising. I loved this book and you will too."-Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
"The Catch is about the mysteries left behind in death, but, importantly, it is just as much about the mysteries of living and the discoveries made while aching and searching and loving. This is a satisfying and wise novel by an author I will happily follow anywhere."-Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and No One Is Here Except All of Us
"The Catch is an intimate family drama about secrets and what we are willing to do for, or hide from, those we love most. Alison Fairbrother's writing makes her characters, with all their flaws and weaknesses and desires, feel like people you know. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Washington, D.C., The Catch unfurls in entirely unexpected directions and had me utterly engaged from the very first page."-Anton DiSclafani, author of The After Party
"Fairbrother's debut is characterized by its elegant yet comfortable prose-readers will feel at home with Ellie as if experiencing the story's events along with her. The mystery drives the plot, but Ellie's personal growth is the heart of the novel. . . . This layered coming-of-age story will appeal to fans of...
Short Excerpt Teaser
One
My father, a minor poet, celebrated holidays out of season. He couldn't get custody of all four of his children at once, so he moved the fall, spring, and winter holidays to the heat of summer. A man who had fathered four kids with three different women was unusual in our Maryland town. Neighbors gossiped and strangers commented. My father struggled financially, and I suppose he could have resented the way we tethered him, but he didn't. Over and over, he brought us into his world.
The first holiday I remember was Summer Christmas. I was six, shy and compliant. Our neighbors swam in the Chesapeake and grilled hot dogs; we sat inside and heaped a fake fir tree with tinsel and chains of cranberries. We knew Christmas in summer was odd, but we didn't care. In fact, we liked it. Or at least I did. Getting to celebrate with my father in the wrong season was far superior to not celebrating with him at all. He was the kind of parent you wanted to be with, and on a holiday he took such pleasure in the details. Once, he lifted one of my baby half-sisters up to press a snowman cookie cutter into a roll of dough, and in that moment, when her shirt rose and her arm stretched out, and everyone was oven-hot and overexcited, I thought that if I ever had children, I would scramble up the holidays too, not because I would need to, but just because I could.
Dad's second wife, Barbara, the woman he married after he divorced my mother, would go upstairs after dinner to give my two half-sisters a bath and put them to bed. She was like the head nun at a nunnery, a grim tactician, her hair always in a bun, and she absented herself from me as much as possible. Because I was the oldest and she wasn't my mother, and because my real mother was then far away in Philadelphia, I was allowed to stay up late with Dad. I sat by his knee and listened to him strum his guitar and sing "Jimmy Crack Corn," which I later learned was racist.
Easter came in summer too, in July. Dad bought PAAS dye kits from Walmart and we dropped colored tablets into plastic cups, adding vinegar and watching the dye swirl through the water. He was so enthusiastic about the whole thing, as if he were a scientist trying to get his children interested in his chosen field. There were a few happy years of Easter-egg hunts, our cheeks fat with chocolate, Barbara wiping my sisters' mouths with wet napkins, until the year of Dad and Barbara's divorce, when he lost patience with the flimsy egg holder and dunked his egg directly into the cup, staining his fingers iridescent purple. My half-sisters, then four and five, paced our father's new place, sniffling and listing all the things they missed about their mom's house, the stuffed animals that hadn't made the half-hour trip to visit Dad and a favorite bedtime book called Randy the Hippopotamus. I didn't miss Barbara at all. I thought of her alone in the bathroom I would never see again, removing pins from her bun, drawing herself a bath, and letting the water out at 7:45 p.m. exactly. Dad and I let my sisters splash in his new tub as long as they wanted, until their skin was mushroomy and they'd finished soaping all their Easter rabbit figurines. After they were tucked in bed, exhausted and pink, their eyelids fluttering because of chocolate or dreams, Dad put his purple fingers on my shoulder and said, "You bring out the best in me, Ellie."
The first time I met Colette, who would become wife number three, was a few years later, at Summer New Year's. We all wore oversized blue-glitter sunglasses, and we painted signs that read, so long 1999! Dad made razzleberry fring frongs-juice and ginger ale with a raspberry floating on top. I am certain he named them. The grown-ups' fring frongs were topped with gin. If Colette was nonplussed that we were ringing in the millennium four months earlier than everyone else, she hid it well. When you were married to my father, or when you were one of his children, you got with the program, because that was what everyone else did. And the program was always exciting, so you never really minded. Colette, though, did she mind? She must have known what he was like. The word boyish was frequently in play, and it was an appealing description, because how many women had married older divorced men, only to find themselves soon taking care of them in ways they had never anticipated? But a boyish man, a perpetual boy, would last a long time. He could grow older with the beautiful girlish woman he loved. And together they would have a family, and...
My father, a minor poet, celebrated holidays out of season. He couldn't get custody of all four of his children at once, so he moved the fall, spring, and winter holidays to the heat of summer. A man who had fathered four kids with three different women was unusual in our Maryland town. Neighbors gossiped and strangers commented. My father struggled financially, and I suppose he could have resented the way we tethered him, but he didn't. Over and over, he brought us into his world.
The first holiday I remember was Summer Christmas. I was six, shy and compliant. Our neighbors swam in the Chesapeake and grilled hot dogs; we sat inside and heaped a fake fir tree with tinsel and chains of cranberries. We knew Christmas in summer was odd, but we didn't care. In fact, we liked it. Or at least I did. Getting to celebrate with my father in the wrong season was far superior to not celebrating with him at all. He was the kind of parent you wanted to be with, and on a holiday he took such pleasure in the details. Once, he lifted one of my baby half-sisters up to press a snowman cookie cutter into a roll of dough, and in that moment, when her shirt rose and her arm stretched out, and everyone was oven-hot and overexcited, I thought that if I ever had children, I would scramble up the holidays too, not because I would need to, but just because I could.
Dad's second wife, Barbara, the woman he married after he divorced my mother, would go upstairs after dinner to give my two half-sisters a bath and put them to bed. She was like the head nun at a nunnery, a grim tactician, her hair always in a bun, and she absented herself from me as much as possible. Because I was the oldest and she wasn't my mother, and because my real mother was then far away in Philadelphia, I was allowed to stay up late with Dad. I sat by his knee and listened to him strum his guitar and sing "Jimmy Crack Corn," which I later learned was racist.
Easter came in summer too, in July. Dad bought PAAS dye kits from Walmart and we dropped colored tablets into plastic cups, adding vinegar and watching the dye swirl through the water. He was so enthusiastic about the whole thing, as if he were a scientist trying to get his children interested in his chosen field. There were a few happy years of Easter-egg hunts, our cheeks fat with chocolate, Barbara wiping my sisters' mouths with wet napkins, until the year of Dad and Barbara's divorce, when he lost patience with the flimsy egg holder and dunked his egg directly into the cup, staining his fingers iridescent purple. My half-sisters, then four and five, paced our father's new place, sniffling and listing all the things they missed about their mom's house, the stuffed animals that hadn't made the half-hour trip to visit Dad and a favorite bedtime book called Randy the Hippopotamus. I didn't miss Barbara at all. I thought of her alone in the bathroom I would never see again, removing pins from her bun, drawing herself a bath, and letting the water out at 7:45 p.m. exactly. Dad and I let my sisters splash in his new tub as long as they wanted, until their skin was mushroomy and they'd finished soaping all their Easter rabbit figurines. After they were tucked in bed, exhausted and pink, their eyelids fluttering because of chocolate or dreams, Dad put his purple fingers on my shoulder and said, "You bring out the best in me, Ellie."
The first time I met Colette, who would become wife number three, was a few years later, at Summer New Year's. We all wore oversized blue-glitter sunglasses, and we painted signs that read, so long 1999! Dad made razzleberry fring frongs-juice and ginger ale with a raspberry floating on top. I am certain he named them. The grown-ups' fring frongs were topped with gin. If Colette was nonplussed that we were ringing in the millennium four months earlier than everyone else, she hid it well. When you were married to my father, or when you were one of his children, you got with the program, because that was what everyone else did. And the program was always exciting, so you never really minded. Colette, though, did she mind? She must have known what he was like. The word boyish was frequently in play, and it was an appealing description, because how many women had married older divorced men, only to find themselves soon taking care of them in ways they had never anticipated? But a boyish man, a perpetual boy, would last a long time. He could grow older with the beautiful girlish woman he loved. And together they would have a family, and...
