Book Review

Carolyn Kuebler’s debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of residents in the small Vermont town of Glenville. Told through multiple perspectives, this character-driven novel begins and ends in spring, unfolding over the course of one year as the characters’ lives intertwine and clash with one another. Each chapter contains vignettes, sharing a variety of viewpoints to fill in otherwise unknown details. Kuebler intentionally crafts a writing style with short, flowing paragraphs to highlight each distinct story and voice.

Through these voices, the reader learns of multiple themes: community, religion, drug abuse, poverty, grief, and loneliness. The opening chapters introduce many characters, but center on those who share commonalities of loneliness and insecurity—shared traits that will later unite many of them.

Nell Castleton comes from a prominent family, but debilitating headaches—a lingering consequence of her sister’s death three decades prior—prevent her from working and cause her to fall into poverty and food insecurity. After her car dies, people like Jeanne take notice of Nell’s three-mile trek into town for groceries.

Jeanne enjoys her job at the post office, learning the latest gossip through conversation and residents’ mail. “‘You can’t help but know things,’” Jeanne says. “‘In a town like this someone’s always looking out for you. Or talking smack about you.’” With the rise of technology and online banking, her small-town gig—and source of gossip—may become a thing of the past, but there’s hope when Jeanne notices multiple packages for Jim Calper.

Glenville’s newest residents, the Calper family—Jim, Sarah, and their son, Willoughby—moved from New York in search of new beginnings. Despite Jim’s reservations about moving to Glenville, regardless of his own connection when he met Sarah at a meditation retreat, he also knows Sarah’s childhood family hunting trips drew her to the area. Sarah desires to share the same slow-moving lifestyle with Will before he leaves for college in the fall. Contrary to his mother’s wishes, Will feels disconnected in the small town so different from New York City. He feels he is in “exile,” until he meets Honey Mitchell.

The Mitchell family offers Will and Jim an immediate connection to their new hometown, regardless of any resentment the two of them may share. Jim, a climate journalist, is tasked with writing an article about global apiary colony collapse disorder—an article that introduces the Calpers to the Mitchells.

David, Ruth, and Dorothy “Honey” Mitchell are a Christian beekeeping family with the largest apiary in Vermont, Honey in the Rock. David appreciates hard work and dedication and is a firm believer in second chances; he attributes colony collapse disorder to sin, specifically “greediness and selfishness.” He’s also a believer that God can use him to reach anyone, even an atheist like Jim.

Although they’re cordial toward each other, a silent rift widens as David and Ruth’s traditional values and countercultural lifestyle collide with the fact-based, science-driven Jim and Sarah, who agree that “people in small towns need to believe in something bigger” and aren’t expected to be “enlightened atheists” like they are. But then unforeseen circumstances cause struggles that not only affect the Calpers and Mitchells, but swell into the community like a growing fog, figuratively collapsing their entire community.

While Glenville moves from the new beginnings of spring and transitions from fall to the hardships of winter, the community is in disarray, much like colony collapse disorder. An apiary houses beehives with bees living in tight-knit colonies with a queen, workers, and drones. Each honeybee depends on the next as they forage for nectar and pollen, fight off the dangers of mites, diseases, and natural predators, and create food stores of honey. Without each other, the colony simply wouldn’t survive.

It’s clear Glenville must learn to depend on one another, and for some, dependence means survival after tragedy strikes their community during wintertime. Kuebler foreshadows the town’s misfortune through Nell’s voice: “The darkest day is nearly here, though winter, it seems, has barely begun.” The juxtaposition between Nell’s lingering grief for her sister and the town’s tragedy is apparent. With Nell’s growing reliance on a new friend, the Calpers and Mitchells also learn to seek refuge and depend on each other more than expected, except for Jim, whose personal exile is comparable to honeybee drones at the end of the fall when they’re evicted from the hive.

Kuebler uses the honeybee colonies to show that Jim’s rejection of the community is akin to an inability to survive independently, as viewed from David’s perspective, specifically regarding the bees dying of natural causes. It’s a reminder that we shouldn’t grieve alone, but we should lament with our community surrounding us because grief and sorrow are a natural part of our lives:

The big sky and the pink light on the white field cluttered with hives.

Bees in there, warm and snug for the winter, keeping each other warm just like they should, like they always have.

Hundreds of them will die this winter of natural causes. It’s not a plague, just part of the deal.

Which of course doesn’t mean the plague won’t come. You can’t see it. Even if you’re watching close, you can miss the important things sometimes.

Kuebler’s flowing words also display the unexpected outcome of tragedy, using unprecedented events to tie back into colony collapse disorder. But Honey in the Rock, thus far, is unaffected by colony collapse. And like Glenville’s apiary, instead of the entire community collapsing under a tragedy, the townspeople’s differences and feelings of loneliness fade as they come together to grieve.

In Liquid, Fragile, Perishable—a fitting and reflective title for this story—Kuebler masterfully crafts a fictional small American town using powerful themes and symbols, making the story feel authentic in a way that reminds us just how quickly sorrow can strike and how much we need community when it does.

Whether readers enjoy community or solitude, this book is for anyone who appreciates the complexity of multiple perspectives and the intricacy of interwoven characters within the plot. Once introduced, the characters are distinct and easy to follow as each character helps drive the story forward. The poignant and absorbing plot draws the reader in, providing engagement with the characters, like a curious neighbor peeking into their affairs. Relatable situations make it easy to empathize with each character, leaving the reader eager to discover the story’s conclusion.