You Should Read PENITENCE by Kristin Koval
Reading Notes
Sometimes I read to escape stressors in my life; at other times I read to explore new places or historical periods.
But when the year is waning and days are shortening; when I am sacrificing weekends to the looming semester deadline; when I am questioning all the inescapable holiday traditions that drive me to equal parts madness and nostalgia; when I am reflecting on all I have yet to accomplish—then, I read to feel less alone. I read to find that tiny spark of sameness in a totally made-up character.
Kristin Koval’s Penitence, which probes the limits of forgiveness, offers just that spark. It opens in a fictional Colorado ski town called Lodgepole, where thirteen-year-old Nora has committed a seemingly unforgivable act: the murder of her fourteen-year-old brother, Nico. Their parents, Angie and David, respond so differently that their marriage is threatened as well. Nico suffered from juvenile Huntington’s disease, a terminal diagnosis. Was this a mercy killing? Did Nora hope to prevent her brother’s inevitable descent into Alzheimer’s, a disease that is also killing Angie’s mother? Was it an accident while Nora was handling David’s work-issued firearm? Or worse: was Nico’s death a typical sibling spat-turned-tragic mistake when Nora gave into a split-second impulse?
For Nora’s defense, David solicits help from Martine, a local lawyer. When Martine visits Nora at the juvenile detention center, she’s met with silence “because [Nora] can’t—or won’t—remember the what or the how or even the when” (61). Martine recruits help from her son, an NYC-based lawyer, but Julian cannot get anything out of Nora either. And to complicate matters further, Julian is not only Angie’s ex-boyfriend, but also an eyewitness to an accident that killed Angie’s younger sister years ago.
Despite the prevalence of lawyers and deaths, this is no Law & Order-style whodunnit. I have no doubt that Koval, a former lawyer herself, could write a fantastic courtroom drama, but I appreciate that this novel concerns itself more with learning how to live in the aftermath of trauma, both self-inflicted and accidental, rather than with uncovering the reason behind it. Nora’s story suggests that a reason why is less important than the redemption sought after a cruel or careless act.
And that quest for redemption? Well, that’s the tiny spark I sought when I opened the book.
Village Greens Park on Thanksgiving Morning 2024
At one point, reflecting on Angie’s sister’s accident, Julian recognizes that he and Angie have completely separate memories and interpretations of their shared experience. He thinks, “Our fault meant something different to Angie than it did to him. After all these years, he still didn’t know what was his fault and what was hers. . . . Maybe he still didn’t know what our fault meant to him” (101). Julian’s uncertainty points out a linguistic shortcoming. When we think of fault, we think of blame, and when we think of blame, we long to point to a specific person or event that caused hurt. But there are degrees of both blame and fault, nuances that exist in reality but are not captured by either word. I nodded along with Julian when he reached this realization because I knew exactly what he meant—or perhaps, this fictional character knew how I felt.
A painting by my daughter
Here’s another glimmer: As Angie tries to carry on after Nico’s death, she returns to painting, a passion she left behind along with Julian years earlier. Painting provides her with structure and purpose. It grounds her in something she can control when everything else is whirling away from her. When she brings watercolors to the detention center, painting also connects her with Nora once more. Angie reflects, “Even if her life is falling apart, she is still this: an artist. She creates beauty; she finds beauty. She is not defined only by her failures” (242). Swap out artist for writer, and I think: Same.
Tiny sparks of sameness abound. If you’re looking for a wise novel to help you interrogate what it is to be human, give Penitence a try when it comes out on January 28, 2025. (And then check out what Koval herself thinks you should read!)
Need-to-Know
Pub Date: January 2025
Length: 308 pages
Timeline: alternates between 2016-2017 and 1991-2001
Setting: rural Colorado & NYC
Narrator: close 3rd POV of multiple characters
Pairs Well With: snowy days & winter contemplation; “The End of Innocence” by Don Henley; Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson
Fun Fact: Not only does Koval use a quote from Just Mercy as an epigraph, but she also used to be a lawyer!
Book Club
Martine thinks, “And then there’s the big question, the question the media has asked over and over, the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue, the question that might never have a satisfactory answer: Why?” In your view, why is this question so all-consuming? What is it about our culture (or maybe just our humanity) that makes us obsess over the why, sometimes to the detriment of other important questions?
Angie keeps a secret for many years that is revealed at the end of the book. Imagine she told the truth about it right away. What impact do you think it might have had on the characters? Which situations may have been avoided? Which may have been inevitable, regardless of the truth?
Close Reading
Nico’s death pushes Angie and David apart:
“They’d fought again yesterday after dinner and then lay in bed all night like two pieces of wood, stiff and unyielding. They’re falling apart, the two of them, when she knows they should be supporting each other, helping the other bear this unbearable weight. Instead, there’s a black crack between them, a yawning void with Nico’s absence on one side and Nora’s guilt on the other.”
There is much to love in these lines, but I want to focus on the sounds, which too often go unremarked upon in novels. Koval uses a simile to compare the couple to “two pieces of wood, stiff and unyielding.” This sentence made me appreciate how the word wood itself is stiff and unyielding. Try saying it aloud! The d sound is what is known as a plosive, which blocks the air flow as you drop your tongue from the front roof of your mouth. The sound is, well, unyielding!
Next, notice the repetition of bear in “bear this unbearable weight.” I like that the first instance uses the word bear alone. That way, when I hear the sound again a couple syllables later, I’m paying attention to how it is used, lego-like, to build a new word. Bear has the potential for hope; the first definition listed for the verb is “to accept or allow oneself to be subjected to especially without giving way.” When we say we can’t bear something, we’re effectively saying we’ll never let something stand. But unbearable lacks that optimism. Placing bear and unbearable so close mimics the way a split-second decision separates Angie and David’s lives before and after Nico’s death.
And finally, let’s look at the “black crack” separating them. Like wood, black and crack are also one-syllable words ending in plosives. They are stiff as well. In her choice to rhyme them, Koval doubles down on the situation’s harshness. Crack is also sometimes used to refer to the sound of gunshot, so the word here echoes Nora’s crime.
Creative Writing
Fiction: Driving back from a visit with Nora, Angie tries to find herself: “In her minivan again, searching for positives: I used to be somebody. I was a painter. I created works of art and added meaning to the world. I helped other people see beauty that was otherwise invisible” (174).
Use these sentences as a template for building a character who is reflecting on the past: I used to be ____. I was a ____. I created ____ and added ____ to the world. The trick is that you’re not allowed more than these three sentences of backstory! Once you have them established, write forward in time only, considering how this history influences your character.
Nonfiction: While she’s in NYC with Julian, Angie recalls a fond memory from their time in Lodgepole: “When they were teens, they loved to lie under the aspen grove off of Wolf Creek Trail” (148). Write about a place where you used to find solace. It doesn’t necessarily need to be secluded or in nature! As you write, think about the opening to The Sound of Music, where the camera zooms in from high above the mountains to Maria. How can you depict your place from high above/far away? Then, what details become clearer the closer in your “camera” goes?
Sentence Study
Koval expertly conjures the natural world in many scenes, but here is one of my favorite examples:
“Each year, fall’s rustling gave way to winter’s silence, imposed by heavy snowflakes that muffled the whole world, but by spring that frozen world thawed, the plink-plink of dripping water a prelude to the forest’s summer symphony.”
First, I love the balance of this sentence. Almost an equal number of words fall on either side of “but,” which is the coordinating conjunction joining the two independent clauses. Both halves of the sentence are even, just as the seasons are even in length.
In the first clause, the main subject-predicate pair is “rustling gave,” and a participial phrase (“imposed by heavy snowflakes”) joined to a dependent clause (“that muffled the world”) describe the “winter’s silence.”
In the second half, the main subject-predicate pair is “that [frozen] world thawed.” Instead of another participial phrase, Koval uses an absolute phrase to describe the spring weather: “the plink-plink of dripping water a prelude to the forest’s summer symphony.” An absolute phrase is almost a sentence but is missing one crucial bit, usually a verb. If this string of words included “was” before “a prelude,” it could be a stand-alone sentence. If so, the structure of the second half of the original sentence would have to change to accommodate it. Omitting the verb ensures the phrase will never graduate to a clause, dependent or otherwise, and maintains the careful balance Koval has constructed.
