When considering that Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer is about a dysfunctional family the title is certainly appropriate. Yet these are subtle, more like distracting sparklers than explosives, although the repercussions are rattling.
Narrator C.C. begins her story as an engaged woman about to marry into a wealthy family. She alternates between the present and living in Florida as a youth with her older sister and parents. C.C.’s father is a slick, successful used car salesman. He moves his family from Ohio to the Sunshine State after burning down his own sales lot for insurance money.
Those funds allow him to purchase property in a rural, as yet undeveloped area in Palm Beach County, and build a house with a swimming pool. These, C.C. says, are the best days of her childhood.
Soon, however, the halcyon times fade: her sister becomes a drug addict, and her parents begin a drawn-out separation while sharing the same space — until they don’t.
The chapters about C.C. as an adult living in Connecticut are less engaging. There are no pyrotechnics and not much action. Those are saved for her teenage years.
C.C. is smart enough to see she has to work to change the trajectory of her life. The odds are not in her favor of achieving any semblance of a normal life, i.e., without following in her parents’ or sister’s patterns of deceit and self-destruction.
Raymer incorporates dark humor while describing the harsh reality of living in a world of disappointments.
Fireworks Every Night
3.75 Bookmarks
Random House, 2023
224 pages
The Blue Page Special 