You Know Who You Are

Vines – the climbing plants, that is – grow slowly, steadily, branching this way and that, but always with support. The Vines – the family at the center of Ben Dolnick's second novel, You Know Who You Are – are not so very different. Each member of the family, though rooted (ahem) firmly in the day to day, follows a roughly upward path, but middle child Jacob, whose life is followed more acutely across 15 years in these pages, leads a more meandering course.

From the title (a challenge, a threat, or merely an observation) and the opening chapter's manhunt onward, You Know Who You Are is very clearly Jacob's search for self. The reader watches him slip slyly from his childhood home during his mother's illness, in pursuit of something, be it adventure or friendship or, eventually, academic and professional direction. He views his path as diametrically opposed to that of his older brother, Will (who, in another symbolic naming choice, goes by his full name during a particularly self-assured phase in college, thus meaningfully appending "I am" to the appellation his family used for two decades), but it's the ever-changing dynamics among the siblings that remain in their own way a constant in Jacob's life; his story begins and ends with them.

Dolnick's skill lies in how adroitly he manages Jacob's voice throughout the novel. Each chapter skips ahead two or three years, and age-appropriate metaphors and parenthetical asides mark those changes in the character, but at the same time, the reader never finds an unrealistic shift in Jacob's perspective or mood. The action moves along at a steady and realistic pace, punctuated by major milestones that cause a shift in the characters' growth, a new tendril to spring from the Vines' lifeline.

Jacob is very much human, ever-changing and always learning, and he bears some remarkable similarities to his creator with his constant writings, his geographical location, and his introspection on life (though for the former, that takes place in a biology lab). If the character's constant yearning to be told he's loved is also a quest shared by Dolnick, though, the search should end with this book.