Did You Ever Have a Family

In 2015, novelist Bill Clegg published his first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, which went on to be long-listed for both the Man Booker and National Book Award prizes. An exploration of how to move on from a tremendous and completely senseless loss, this book tells the story of a woman who must remake her life after her entire family dies. Clegg imbues the small moments of life with meaning, creating a meditation on grief, recovery, and the need for community – a need underscored by the fact that Did You Ever Have a Family shifts its narration from character to character, often without warning the reader of the switch.

The novel’s precipitating event is an enormous tragedy. We open on the day of a wedding. June Reid, the mother of the bride, has spent the night sleeping outside in order to make space for everyone in the family to stay in her house. But then, early in the morning, the stove explodes, taking with it everyone from the house. June’s daughter Lolly, Lolly’s fiancé Will, Lolly’s father Adam, and June’s boyfriend Luke all die in the explosion and fire.

We learn that Silas, a pothead teenager hired to work in June’s garden, had overheard Luke and June arguing about marriage the night before the explosion. Luke wants to marry June, but June is worried that Luke’s social standing in the community is just too much beneath her. After the pair storm off, Silas hears an odd noise coming from the stove in the kitchen and then sneaks into the house to adjust the stove’s mechanism.



The funerals go by in a blur for a devastated and emotionally gutted June. Despairing, June decides to leave Connecticut and go on a road trip to all the places she remembers Lolly visiting in an attempt to somehow commune with her daughter’s spirit. The roundabout voyage goes through national parks, hotels, and even somehow significant gas stations. Eventually, June ends her journey in a motel on the Pacific Ocean – the Moonstone Inn in the town of Moclips in Washington State. Shattered and in terrible health, June tries to recuperate there under the care of the kindly couple who run the place, and Cissy, the hotel housekeeper. As she ruminates over what has happened, June realizes that she would have finally said yes to Luke’s proposals the day of Lolly’s wedding – the day when he died.

The only member of the family that’s left in the small town of Wells after June leaves is Lydia, Luke’s mother. She is an outcast in the gossipy town, and there is no one to help her with her mourning. Ever since she was a beautiful and sexy teenager, Lydia has been the center of attention – both good and bad. In high school, girls spread mean rumors about her while boys tried to corner her. One way to cope with this and to get some measure of protection was to start dating the high school bully, Earl Morey. But when Lydia and Earl married right after graduation, he became a violently abusive alcoholic.

To cope with her awful home life, Lydia had an affair with a black man passing through town to enter drug rehab. The affair resulted in a pregnancy, and when Lydia gave birth to the mixed-race Luke, Earl left her. For a while, Lydia makes an excellent single mother, and everything seems to be going very well for her and her son. Luke becomes a superb swimmer and seems poised to go to college on an athletic scholarship.



But then the life Lydia has cobbled together falls apart when she starts a relationship with Rex, a seemingly warm and kind drug dealer. Lulled into a false sense of security by the novel experience of being treated well by a man, Lydia doesn’t prevent what happens next. After using Luke’s car to transport cocaine, Rex blames the drug dealing on Luke. Moreover, he gets Lydia to testify that the cocaine is Luke’s, arguing that since Luke is still very young, the judge will go easy on him. After years of estrangement, Luke and Lydia were only just starting to reconnect – under June’s influence – when he died in the explosion.

While June and Lydia try to recover, the town is abuzz with the unbelievable events. Silas is terrified to tell anyone about what he saw and heard, so the town’s rumor mill pins the blame for the fire on Luke. After all, in town he is known as the half-black, born-out-of-wedlock drug dealer who lost a college scholarship when he went to jail. Why wouldn’t he also be the one who caused the fire?

The novel ends with Silas at last confessing to his role in the terrible accident and with Luke no longer being the subject of suspicion. Lydia leaves Connecticut and catches up with June at the Moonstone Inn. Now that the truth about everything that’s happened is out, the two women can begin to heal for real.



The novel was widely praised on publication, though some readers complain about the confusing way in which narrators switch without warning. But the idea of narrating the goings-on of an upper-class resort town through the working-class people that make up its often ignored and marginalized periphery gives this novel an unusual perspective on class and community. As Clare Clark puts it in The Guardian, “this is a wonderful and deeply moving novel, which compels us to look directly into the dark night of our deepest fears and then quietly, step by tiny step, guides us towards the first pink smudges of the dawn.”