Everyone Is Still Alive: Debut novel deftly captures the highs and lows of family life

Cahy Rentzenbrink’s first outing as a novelist tackles the gap between expectation and reality.

FICTION

Everyone Is Still Alive

By Cathy Rentzenbrink

Phoenix, €19.60

Cornwall resident Cathy Rentzenbrink is a former bookseller and an acclaimed non-fiction writer, whose three well-received books include a memoir about the death of her brother, a treatise on the nature of grief and a love letter to the act of reading itself. Her remarkably astute first novel, Everyone Is Still Alive, concerns a number of young families from the same middle-class London street.

Essentially, ...