Family drama threaded with foreboding

LYNN Steger Strong's fourth novel, The Float Test, is a piercing portrait of the Kenner clan, whose conflicts echo the famous line from Anna Karenina: “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

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After their mother — a fearless attorney — dies of a stroke during her morning run, the four Kenner siblings gather with their father in Florida to mourn. Tension runs high as long-held grudges surface; notably, no one is speaking to Fred (short for Winnifred), largely due to her habit of using family issues as fodder for her novels. She feels increasingly dissatisfied with her writing career, which has alienated her from family and friends.

At the repast following their mother’s funeral, Fred discovers a gun in her parents’ bedroom closet, tucked among her mother’s expensive, colour-coded clothes. “The gun, when Fred came upon it, must have been a shock,’ observes her sister Jude, the novel’s omniscient narrator, who has access to her siblings’ innermost thoughts. Jude adds a jab at Fred: “I knew about the gun, its origins, because I talked to Mom and Dad. I listened; Fred did not.”

Fred contemplates the gun’s “hard weight and cold sharp edges,” which remind her of her mother.