Peter Orner returns to his beloved Chica­go with a riv­et­ing, rule-break­ing, genre-bend­ing, and mul­ti-tex­tured new nov­el of gen­er­a­tional ache, The Gos­sip Colum­nist’s Daugh­ter. 

The year is 1963. Days after JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, Karyn (a.k.a. Cook­ie) Kupcinet, the daugh­ter of gos­sip colum­nist, local celebri­ty and yak-about-town, Irv Kupci­nent, is found dead in her Hol­ly­wood apart­ment. A nepo baby, Cook­ie was a bud­ding star­let, with addic­tions and angst to match. Spun in the press as a mur­der, the case remains unsolved, with more ques­tions than answers.

Enter Jed Rosen­thal, today. Strug­gling nov­el­ist, new­ly-sep­a­rat­ed father, and admit­ted ​“emo­tion­al pro­cras­ti­na­tor,” Jed becomes con­sumed with Cook­ie’s sto­ry — osten­si­bly for book research— decades after her death. But his is more than mere voyeuris­tic obses­sion; there’s a per­son­al angle, too. His own grand­par­ents, Lou and Babs, had been insep­a­ra­ble from Cook­ie’s folks, Irv and Essee, until a minor inci­dent at Cook­ie’s funer­al result­ed in Jed’s grand­par­ents sud­den­ly being ​“dropped like old shoes.”

Through Jed’s lens of long­ing, the sto­ry unfolds. Is his rab­bit hole hunger an indul­gent diver­sion from his own nec­es­sary soul search­ing? Or is his deep dive into Cook­ie’s sto­ry (and by expan­sion, the Kupcinets’ sto­ry, his grand­par­ents’ sto­ry, his Uncle Sol­ly’s sto­ry, and the larg­er pow­er-grab­by sto­ry of Chica­go) the por­tal through which he final­ly reck­ons with him­self and his fal­ter­ing mar­riage? Jed acknowl­edges, ​“I do believe there’s a dif­fer­ence between wal­low­ing and try­ing to claw your way back in time.”

The Gos­sip Colum­nist’s Daugh­ter is a beau­ti­ful, yearn­ing book of ​“old hurts and sor­rows.” As it moves between sto­ry­lines, the nov­el explodes con­ven­tion, build­ing an epic nar­ra­tive mosa­ic through archival pho­tog­ra­phy, fam­i­ly lore, spec­u­la­tive and his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, crime reports, and oth­er meta ele­ments, includ­ing a let­ter to Saul Bel­low, there­by resist­ing easy categorization. 

If Irv and Essee Kupcinet feel larg­er than life, there is an inten­tion­al elu­sive­ness, an almost shad­owy unknowa­bil­i­ty, to oth­er char­ac­ters. Jed admits, ​“I’m descend­ed from a man who chose to remain on the periph­ery, and I like to believe, despite my cho­sen line of work, that I’ve inher­it­ed some of his pref­er­ence for going unno­ticed.” As he stud­ies images of Cook­ie, he notes ​“There’s…. a vague­ness in her eyes that allows who­ev­er looks at her to make up their own sto­ry about who she is or might become.” Cook­ie and her whole atten­dant mythol­o­gy become a sort of repos­i­to­ry. What is any­one search­ing for in anoth­er per­son­’s sto­ry if not themselves? 

Jed’s search out­ward echoes inward. ​“Who knows where or when it went wrong, or even if it did? If we can’t pin­point such a moment in our own lives, why should we be able to pin­point it in any­body else’s?” 

In typ­i­cal Orner fash­ion, the sto­ry hums with qui­et, unas­sum­ing truths. ​“All the nights, all the for­get­table nights make up what­ev­er time we’re grant­ed, and if you think this is noth­ing, then life isn’t anything.”

But the comedic impulse is nev­er far away, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it’s aimed at Orner’s home­town: ​“Chica­go Jews like to indulge in our con­nec­tions to the Mob. Call it a point of iron­i­cal pride. We did­n’t all used to be ortho­don­tists in Deerfield.” 

The direc­tor of cre­ative writ­ing at Dart­mouth Col­lege, Orner play­ful­ly tucks in numer­ous craft nuggets. ​“Minor char­ac­ters don’t know they’re minor. Doesn’t this apply to us all?” One gets the sense that this real­iza­tion may have been what sunk Cook­ie, even as it buoys Jed toward repair. 

Pre­sent­ed in short, punchy sec­tions with lots of white space, The Gos­sip Colum­nist’s Daugh­ter embraces gaps. The expan­sive­ness of pos­si­bil­i­ty lives in those gaps. That is the grace of a sto­ry that enchants as it bewil­ders, that con­tin­ues to open instead of close. Gen­eros­i­ty stems from loose stitch­ing. Gaps are what say, Hey, read­er, fel­low minor char­ac­ter in the the­ater of life, there’s plen­ty of room for you here, too.