What to Keep

Denny Roman at twelve: a midwestern girl with a clueless family, a bit part in the school play, a crush on the drama teacher, and concerns about frontal development. Her mother and father, divorced neuroscientists, are raising her with benign neglect. The family is virtually run by an agoraphobe named Maureen, who has a taxi fleet and a superorganized and compassionate method of managing other people’s lives, especially Denny’s.

Denny Roman at twenty-six: jets home from Hollywood for the weekend and lands in the marital minefield of her mother and stepfather’s imminent relocation to New York. She has to pack up her childhood possessions in forty-eight hours before returning to L.A. for a big audition with Robert Altman. She’s supposed to be deciding what to keep, but she’s worried about what to wear. In a deranged moment, she kisses her stepfather. On the lips.

Denny Roman at thirty-six: A playwright on the eve of her first Off-Broadway production and once again living within sparring distance of her mother, she comes home from rehearsal one afternoon and finds a thirteen-year- old boy on her doorstep: Luke, the son of Maureen and a Mauritanian refugee cabdriver. Bewildered by his mother’s recent death, Luke is looking for a place where he might fit. Will Denny keep him in New York? Will she get any help from Sean—an actor whose good looks may be all there is to him? Will she be reconciled with her mother at long last?

What to Keep looks into the lives of Denny Roman, her mother, her father, her stepfather, and her surrogate mother—all practicing variations on the theme “parent” but none of themquite done being children themselves. Bubbling with sly humor and psychological insight, their story holds out a refreshingly flexible and realistic model of what a good family—whether created by nature or chance or both—can consist of.


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

A wry, ironic voice narrates this sharply observed and paradoxically tender first novel, which reveals Denny Roman at three pivotal moments in her life. In Columbus, Ohio, in 1976, 12-year-old Denny essentially mothers herself, since her divorced mother, Lily, is more preoccupied with her neurological research than with the details of maternal care. Cool, remote Charles, Denny's father, is also a doctor; he adores Denny but can't show it. Denny's emotional support, then, comes from Maureen, an agoraphobe who runs a physician's answering service that has morphed into a life support for the Romans. An efficient surrogate mother, Maureen books taxis, makes hair appointments and fields calls from Denny's school, but her agoraphobia is a symptom of her own loneliness. Thus begins this smart, witty novel about good but emotionally blocked people who struggle to connect. Denny's thrill of success as the lead in her middle school play (which neither of her parents attends) impels her to pursue an acting career in Hollywood, where the novel jumps a decade later. She flies home to Columbus to help her mother, now remarried and on the eve of a prestigious career opportunity, pack up the family home before it's sold. Denny's question-what to keep of her youthful possessions-motivates her move to New York and leads to another career change. The plot resumes a decade later as Denny's first play is about to premiere, and as Luke, the 12-year-old son of the late Maureen, shows up on her doorstep and becomes a catalyst for the next stage in Denny's life. This study in emotional dislocation, held aloft by astute psychological insights and deadpan humor, moves to a satisfying denouement about connections that run deep and can surface when people try hard and are lucky.