Sharon Pywell

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The author of the odd, haunting What Happened to Henry (2004) does even better in her powerful second novel about the inescapable consequences of war and lies.

Narrator Iris Sunnaret initially depicts her childhood with adoptive parents Eleanor and Charlie Jackson as secure and idyllic, complete with patriotic
Fourth of July barbecues. But then her brothers go to serve in Vietnam in 1968, and word comes that Eddie is dead and Perry is missing. Older sister Angie, enraged that Charlie and Eleanor allowed the boys to enlist, starts an affair with their son Hank (raised as a brother to the four Sunnarets)and gets involved with radical groups protesting the war -- anathema to
Charlie, who served with the Sunnarets' father in the early days of the Indochinese conflict and has always run his household along strict, military-influenced lines of order. "Everybody had his place," remembers
Hank in one of the novel's most chilling scenes, explaining why Iris's father had killed the children's dog while home on one of his infrequent
visits from the Far East. Girls rank above dogs but below boys and men; where grown women fit in is unclear, but the gradually emerging facts about
the death of Iris's mother suggest that being the wife of a warrior was intolerable for her. Angie had protected baby Iris from their mother's increasing mental instability, and as her illusions about the past drop away, Iris struggles to reconcile the embittered adult sister who frightens her with the aunt and uncle whose complicity with evil she now recognizes but whose love she cannot reject. There are no easy answers in Pywell's rich narrative, which seems to offer Shakespearean serenity in the final
scene (another Fourth of July party), then slaps readers in the face with a brutal reminder of the cost at which this serenity was achieved.

The best examination of political and moral issues within the framework of family life since Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991). Pywell has a gift
for capturing the complexity of sibling relationships that is all her own.

Denver Post
April 30, 2006

Sharon Pywell's sophomore effort, "Everything After," is one of those books that pulls and tugs at you, nipping at the corner of your emotions. It's seductive and sneaks up on you, adding layer upon layer and in the end makes you think about the things that mean something to you.
You don't have to dive far to break the surface tension that Pywell creates in the beginning, setting the stage for a family drama. This is, at its heart, a story of a family that is in most ways - surely the most important ways - pretty typical. It is about the special bonds that only siblings have, bonds that last a lifetime and cannot easily be broken despite events and feelings that can strain them.
It is also about a special time in our nation's history when many such ties were stretched, when their tensile strengths were tested and sometime even reached.
"Everything After" tells us of the life of four young people, two brothers and two sisters, who, on the surface, live the life of Riley. But, just beneath the surface, there are some ugly events.
Eddie and Perry are the boys, just at the end of their teen years. They fell between older sister Angie and Iris, the youngster of the lot. It's through Iris' eyes that the story is told.
When the children were younger, their father was away a lot, and their mother was emotionally disturbed. When their mother disappears, either from accidental drowning or suicide, no one is sure, their father can't be bothered, and the four children are left in the care of friends of the family, "Aunt Eleanor" and "Uncle Charlie," who are raising their own son, Hank.
Taking over as mother and father, Charlie and Eleanor raise the four children as their own, lavishing them with praise and, more important, the safety net that parents provide their children. Their lives revolve around summers at a lake house and the massive Fourth of July party that the family throws each year.
But world events are spiraling out of control in Southeast Asia, and Eddie and Perry come of age and head off for the war in Vietnam. A mysterious and tragic incident in Vietnam leaves Eddie dead and Perry missing, setting in motion a string of events that Pywell doles out to the reader slowly as the story unfolds. It's here that we begin to understand the emotions and motivations that make up the siblings' lives, both in relation to their family and apart from it.
Iris has always been the peacemaker of the lot, while beautiful and headstrong Angie has always been the free and independent spirit. In many ways, it is Angie who propels the plot. As Iris tells it, "Angie had muscle - a kind of physical authority whose power was magnified by her indifference to attention of any kind, be it praise or judgment."
With the boys, it was always Eddie who had the darker side, while Perry seemed more sensitive.
True to form, Angie finds herself in serious trouble, even with Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Charley, while Iris attempts to reconcile ruffled feelings so the family can return to the type of idyll that it seems only Angie remembers.
As Iris learns more and more about her past and about her siblings, she has to face some truths about them that she would rather not know, while at the same time owning up to some of those truths about herself.
Most of all, though, "Everything After" is a story of memories, and everyone knows that memories can be good and bad, real or imagined. As Pywell says, "memory is just another way of forgetting: you place a picture in your mind and the longer you entertain it, the further it pushes all other possible truths awa

People
May 22, 2006

A perceptive take on the generation that came of age in the late 60's, this second novel, with its quietly beautiful, perfectly paced prose, centers on a family divided both physically and politically by the Vietnam War.

Publishers Weekly
May, 2006

Pywell's strong second novel echoes the domestic drama of her well received debut, What Happened to Henry, this time pitting an idyllic Arlington, Va., family against the Vietnam War. Iris Sunnaret, at 19 the baby of the Sunnaret family, is the curious but shielded narrator, her sunny view tempered by her siblings' perceptions and her own dim memories. Having lost both their parents at a young age (father left; mother drowned), Iris and her three siblings-Eddie, Perry and Angie-were taken in by their Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Charlie and cousin Hank. Eldest brother Eddie has volunteered for the war, and Perry follows; when the family learns that Eddie has been killed and Perry is missing in action-and, furthermore, that Perry may have killed Eddie-it turns the family against itself. Rock-ribbed patriots Charlie and Eleanor square off against rebellious Angie, and Iris and Hank are caught in the middle. Iris makes it her mission to discover what really happened in Vietnam, leading her to discoveries about her broken family and the world outside of it. Pywell's sharp depiction of complex sibling relationships and the Vietnam-era generation clash is occasionally betrayed by unlikely character reversals, providing glimpses of the morality play hiding behind the flesh-and-blood Sunnarets, but Pywell's ability to nail the dynamics of a family in crisis make this an immersive, affecting read. (May)