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"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold." Yeats's words seem fittingfor the slowly disintegrating Airie family and their son Pilot, a schizophrenic.Two decades ago, Pilot's little sister, Fiona, disappeared. In the aftermath,the Airie family fell apart--"unraveled," Pilot observes. Old sins have longshadows, and Pilot both welcomes and fears the darkness those shadows offer. His memories of Fiona's disappearance haunt him, nevertheless they are also an anchor toa past that seems more genuine than today's.Pilot's schizophrenia is all the more poignant contrasted with the poise of hisolder brother Eric, a prominent neurosurgeon. Eric is the one who comes to hismother's rescue when she actually is stranded on the highway, struggling to see to operate a vehicle homeafter Pilot's try to help her devolves into a terrifying, emotionalparalysis:Did they know that things had become transparent again, clear as a blue sky seen through blue water? That I possibly could actually see thecancer forming just like a tulip bulb at the bottom of my mother's optical nerve?I possibly could look over the trees completely to the highway, through her car, and through her hair and skin and cartilage and bone in to the folds of tissue around her eyes, to start to see the muscles dilating, the tendrils of nerves and vessels of blood, and the radical cells dividing there, and dividing again.Division also lies at the core of the partnership between Pilot and Eric. Drifting between past and present, the narrative reveals a long history of cruelty and abuse, which, after festering for years, erupts into whatEric's therapist dryly conditions "a significant psychotic episode."What could be crazierthan accusing your brother of murdering your sister? Pilot's struggle toremember the truth of his family's history calls into question the very naturesof truth, memory, individuality, and complicity.The novel's strength is based on the deftness with which author Peter Moore Smithcaptures Pilot's schizophrenia. The reader follows Pilot in each unsteadyattempt to negotiate the ever-fluctuating boundary between reality and illusion:"Eyes closed, I had been in a bed upstairs, my arms under the covers so they wouldn'tfloat away. Beyond your window an individual branch was reaching toward the area,unfurling itself to tap contrary to the glass, warning me."Raveling weavesthe fragile threads that bind families and selves into a tapestry that bothcloaks its characters and leaves them starkly vulnerable. --Kelly Flynn
