THE END OF LONELINESS by Benedict Wells

Jules Moreau, the melancholy narrator of this German novel, is a happy, boisterous 11-year-old until his parents perish in a car accident.  He and his older siblings, Liz and Marty, are shipped off to a public boarding school where they rarely see one another.  The three were already quite different personalities, but their trajectories diverge even further after the tragedy.  Jules becomes fast friends with Alva, who attends the same school but does not board there.  As teenagers, their relationship ends abruptly, but Jules still carries a torch for her and wonders what might have been.  He feels that he has lost his way in life until he resumes contact with Alva and discovers that she has married one of their favorite authors.  As the first-person narrator, Jules is very introspective, and this novel is as much about what he feels and thinks as it is about what happens.  For example, a bullying incident at school becomes a somewhat pivotal event, largely because of how his brother fails to react.  Marty’s friend Toni, however, comes to Jules’s rescue and is perhaps the second loneliest character in the book.  Toni pines for Liz, who strings him along between boyfriends.  Memories also play a large role in this novel, not only because the three Moreaus lost their parents at a young age, but also because Jules feels that Alva was the one true friend his father had advised him to seek.  What struck me most about this novel was how the author reminds us that making memories is not something that we plan.  The best ones are of events that occur unexpectedly.