The Float Test - by Lynn Steger Strong (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"What I loved most about The Float Test is the sense of place. ... The adult children of the family gather on the hot ground of their childhood following their mother's death, where they try to untangle decades of betrayals and sorrow, and reclaim their sense of home." -- Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

From Lynn Steger Strong, critically acclaimed author of Flight, a sophisticated and layered novel about sisters, betrayal, love, and climate change, for readers of The Dutch House and The Most Fun We Ever Had.

The Kenner siblings are at odds. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever--if only they could trust each other. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can't write, maybe because she's lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters' friends. When the four are reunited it's clear that much has changed between them. Equally unsettling are the changes around them; the climate of their hometown is hotter and more oppressive than ever before.

A family story is, of course, only as honest as the person telling it. This family story in particular is fraught with secrets about kids and sex and jobs and why the Kenner matriarch had a gun in her underwear drawer. The biggest secret of all though is the secret of what happened between Jude and Fred to create such a rift between the two once-close middle sisters. Over the course of a sweltering Florida summer, the Kenner siblings will revisit what it means to be a family and, if they are smart and kind and lucky, come out on the other side better for having each other.

A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft.

Review Quotes

"What I loved most about The Float Test is the sense of place, and how the sticky, dense heat of Florida, the relentless sun, the flat roads ending at the ocean, is woven into the Kenner family's DNA. The adult children of the family--all at crisis points in their own lives--gather on the hot ground of their childhood following their mother's death, where they try to untangle decades of betrayals and sorrow, and reclaim their sense of home." - Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
"With surgical precision, Lynn Steger Strong dissects and then elegantly reconstructs an American family on the brink: of falling apart, of finding themselves, of saying all the things left unsaid. From the collateral damage inevitably caused by artists, to the notion that perhaps we are who we always were, Strong's clear and confident voice and prose makes the unvarnished truths in this book sting. But that same quality makes the moments of profound tenderness and humanity linger. The Float Test--and the Floridian world of this clan--will stay with me for a long time to come." - Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Anita de Monte Laughs Last
"An engaging portrait of family dynamics." - People
Not only does the story yield a fascinating meditation on the nature of fiction, but it exhibits profound empathy for each of the characters. This is Strong's best yet. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Strong's characters are deeply interior, but hers are not static, solipsistic books; they have an engrossing momentum, this one included." - Vogue
"The Float Test is a family drama at its finest." - Town & Country
"The way Lynn Steger Strong weaves the complicated web of inter-sibling relationships and the wizardry of family toxicity is a wonder, and I'm her #1 fan." - Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
"As Strong grapples insightfully with questions of who really owns a story, we're also asked to consider what it means to truly love another person, flaws and all -- and, not only that, to turn the lens back on ourselves." - New York Times
"Strong explores the dynamics of siblinghood--alliances and grudges--and interrogates what it means to claim family stories as your own." - New Yorker
"Lynn Steger Strong's exquisitely written fourth novel, The Float Test, is a piercing portrait of the Kenner clan ... Steger Strong here experiments with point-of-view and memory, at times seeming to interrogate the validity of the novel form itself."
- Washington Post