When 30-something real estate agent Brad learns his ex-girlfriend Kara has died of an overdose, he wonders if he didn't always see it coming. Though they haven't spoken for years, Kara was always impulsive and self-destructive. While Brad's wife sympathizes with the peculiar pain of losing an already-lost love, she does not anticipate the surging anxiety it triggers in her husband, a man whose heart was never released by his first love. With the novel Kara Was Here, William Conescu (Being Written) speaks to the rippling effects of an individual's life after death.
Though Kara's death is tragic in its own right, it is also a harbinger of greater, more abstract loss. To Brad and her college friends, she was the last link to a freer past, the sole survivor of a lifestyle they once shared. To her much younger sister, Gwen, Kara represents an intimidating, hypersexual adulthood. Gwen's grieving manifests itself in perverse relationships with Kara's old lovers, suggesting the loss of her sister is linked with the loss of her own innocence and youth.
In many ways, Kara Was Here can be read as a contemporary take on James Joyce's The Dead. No matter the fullness of the present, it will never eclipse the romantic past. The pain of Brad's wife runs deep--she must accept her husband even though some caverns of his heart will never be open to her. Conescu's characters are resilient. Reading through their struggles is an exercise in catharsis and compassion. --Annie Atherton