The Fates is a story about a girl who goes missing and the many possibilities of what happened to her as speculated by a group of boys. Her classmates are obsessed with thinking about where she went and how her life ended up as they grow up themselves. It's a very quick and easy read. It reminded me of myla goldberg's "a false friend", which I enjoyed a lot. I didn't find it groundbreaking but a very good plane read.

So many reviews have called Pittard's writing haunting, and made connections to Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, but there is more to it than that. I constantly had the feeling of watching the plot unfold through the clicking and clattering of old film home movies. The recollections have that dreamy, dark around the edges quality. Each conversation among the boys so clearly as that basement feeling, the way you get when you're huddled beneath your parent (or some parent's) house. I love the attention to myth building, to the way that information gets passed along in small towns. I want so desperately for their version of the tale to be right.

I read this mostly in low, warm lighting, under blankets and pashminas. There is a need to burrow while listening to this story, to give yourself up to the warmth and quasi-slumber state as you lose yourself in the collective we.

Not as good as I had hoped. I had heard many great things about this novel and I was greatly looking forward to it. The premise was interesting -- the effect of a missing 16-year-old girl on the neighborhood boys who loved her. Turns out I'm really not that interested in a 45-year-old man obsessing about the girl he once knew. It grew tedious at times; but I think that it probably just wasn't for me because I didn't like it for the same reason I never liked the TV show "Scrubs" -- I prefer actual stories and events, not constant imagination and speculation within a novel.

Call it stylistic differences or whatever you want but this book felt like a weak stream-of-consciousness tale to me. According to critics it was "percussive" but I say lazy. The plot drifted, got vague, and a little whiny. I didn't even buy the premise which is that a group of pre-teen boys will spend the rest of their lives pining for a girl who disappeared in their youth. Just did not work for me on any level.

This is a tough book.

It's well written and compelling but it's also confusing and unpleasant. I do not know how true to life this version of life from the POV of boys and men is (especially since it's written by a woman) but I really, really hope that it is way off base. It makes most men seem very unpleasant. Unpleasant and immature to their core.

As for what happened to Nora (an unpleasant, confusing, unlikeable character) I guess I'm not sure. I think I know the truth but like "the boys" who narrate, I will always wonder a little bit about those bones.

meh. I expected a lot and didn't get as much as I'd have liked. The concept was compelling, but the story was somewhat exhausting to read, despite it being an easy read... if that makes any sense.

Beautiful. I loved the collective first person, the nostalgia, the malaise.

Slow to start and hard to follow from the beginning but turned into a good, but odd story. Left me wanting more and wanting to know what actually happened to Nora.

Individually, I didn't think any of the characters were all that great. The prose itself wasn't anything groundbreaking.

But somehow, the combination of characters, events, and words made this book something I couldn't put down.

I look forward to reading more of Pittard's work.