A storm is coming.
While Ramona is living her mom life in Savannah, the news is all saying the same thing. There is a hurricane coming, and people should be prepared. Around her, people are talking about evacuating. Ramona hasn’t decided yet if she’s leaving or if she will just hunker down at home and try to ride the storm out. She needs to talk to her husband Desmond to see what he thinks. She’ll have to pick up her son Alex from school. But first, she has to pick up her toddler daughter Nanette from her babysitter, because her babysitter has decided to evacuate, and she wants to leave right away.
Ramona is at work when she gets that call, and she is reluctant to leave, as the company she works for talks about being family friendly but still wants her in the office as much as possible. She hopes her boss won’t notice if she sneaks away to pick up Nanette. But when she gets her toddler home, Ramona can’t help but notice the woman standing in her kitchen. Another mother from Alex’s school, she thinks, but she can’t remember her son’s name. And then her husband walks out in his underwear, and Ramona realizes what is going on. Beside the storm. Beside the struggle with the potty-training. Beside the boss who doesn’t understand her.
There is a Category Four hurricane coming at them, and her husband has been having an affair.
And Ramona has to decide what to do about all of it. And about her mother, who lives on the water in an older house and who refuses to evacuate without her cat and dog. And about Alex’s class pet, a guinea pig named Clarence Thomas, who gets to come home with Alex for the long stormy weekend. And about Bailey, the teenager who lives next door and who volunteered to help Ramona stash her backyard furniture in the shed, and who seems to have nowhere to go and no one to care for him at the moment.
Meanwhile, her mind keeps flashing from the present to the past, to the good memories of her and Desmond, and the bad memories, and her memories of the day that Prince died. He had been a significant part of her self-image, and then he was gone, and she’s felt lost ever since. But she doesn’t feel like she can stop and put herself back together again, not with this storm coming. Right now, she just has to survive the storms. Then maybe she can take a breath and find her own purple rain.
None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive is a tribute to mothers everywhere who have to carry the emotional burden of a family with a partner who isn’t paying attention to what’s going on. This funny and smart debut novel looks at the struggle of today’s complicated life and the women who let pieces of themselves get away while they take care of everyone else. Author Carolyn Prusa reminds readers of the small joys of life and art and friendships and music in between all the things that need to be dealt with, whether a hurricane is coming at them or not.
I am a big fan of humorous novels of modern life, and this definitely hit me on that level. But this one also spoke to me on a deeper level, in that place where life carves out chunks of you as time goes by but leaves things in its wake—beautiful sunsets, old friends, good music, kindnesses. None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive is filled with compassion and warmth as well as lightning and thunder. And while I never dressed up as Prince for Halloween, I do still have to stop and sing every time I hear “Raspberry Beret,” so his legacy lives on for me too. This is a very special story for those needing a pick-me-up as this year closes out. Highly recommended.
Egalleys for None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
