The Styx

Death is the Pompadakis family business. In the Florida Everglades, the descendants of Charon ferry souls across dark water while their own lives buckle under addiction, money troubles, and decades of accumulated grievances. The ghosts, frankly, sometimes seem like the easier company.

Elena Zaretsky has built The Styx around a deliciously inconvenient inheritance: an ancient obligation that refuses to respect modern life. Her mythology is inventive, and her characters are gloriously difficult. They love each other, exasperate each other, and make decisions that would test the patience of the gods themselves. I became far more invested in their quarrels and recoveries than I expected.

The family business is death. The family problem is being alive.

Each Pompadakis sibling has a private battle. Dax wrestles with addiction and the shame that follows it. Keller, the determined fixer, is convinced that one more bargain or well-intentioned sacrifice might finally put everything right. Delilah, or Del, spends her days among the dying and the dead while longing for something painfully ordinary: to be seen, wanted, and taken seriously by the people she loves.

Del was the character I found myself returning to. She can guide a frightened soul toward the afterlife with considerable composure, yet her own relationships leave her uncertain of where she stands. Her attentiveness to others is both a gift and a vulnerability. Watching her gradually claim a little more space for herself gives the novel much of its emotional force.

Dax brings a harsher register. Zaretsky allows addiction its physical misery, its humiliations, and the damage it can do to everyone within reach. His struggle resists an easy solution. The desire to change is genuine; so is the fear of what change might require. That tension gives his storyline its difficult, persuasive humanity.

Ancient gods, appalling manners

The story moves between present-day Florida and ancient Greece, revealing the divine disputes behind the family’s extraordinary predicament. Charon, Hermes, and their fellow immortals arrive with grudges, jealousies, and a remarkable talent for making catastrophic decisions. Gods with unlimited power and very little self-awareness? There is an entire comedy waiting to happen.

Zaretsky is at her most interesting when those ancient quarrels illuminate the family’s present-day choices. The inheritance carries resentment from one generation to the next, along with obligations nobody alive remembers agreeing to. Her characters must decide what loyalty actually demands of them—and how much of an old tradition deserves to survive.

The Everglades provide a wonderfully unsettling setting. Lantern light trembles on black water; mist softens the distance between the living and the dead. The journeys along the river feel ancient and strangely close to home. Zaretsky gives the landscape enough texture and menace to make this particular descent into the underworld feel entirely her own.

A curse passed through a family can begin to look terribly like a duty. The frightening part is how long people can mistake one for the other.

Lou, Marie, and the art of keeping a haunted house lively

Lou deserves a paragraph of his own. He is a ghost with strong opinions, enviable conversational stamina, and a spectacular gift for getting on people’s nerves. His exchanges with Marie are among the book’s small pleasures. Even in a house where the dead are commonplace, someone still has to argue over a card game. I laughed, and I grew surprisingly fond of him.

Marie, meanwhile, lives with the consequences of a supernatural family life that was never entirely hers to choose. Graham’s gambling and absences put further strain on a household already carrying too much. Both parents are flawed, sometimes infuriating, and essential to the novel’s larger portrait of a family whose affection survives even its worst habits.

What the river really carries

Every Pompadakis generation passes down more than an obligation to the dead. Addiction, guilt, grief, and the irresistible urge to rescue other people have become patterns of their own. Zaretsky shows how easily care can harden into control, especially within a family convinced that love gives it the right to interfere.

Keller’s determination to save everyone raises the novel’s sharpest question: where does generosity end and control begin? Other characters must confront versions of the same dilemma, weighing family loyalty against the possibility of making a different life. There is real psychological substance in watching people who guide the dead struggle to understand how the living should behave.

Humour keeps the darker material from becoming oppressive. Lou’s interruptions, the family’s exasperated exchanges, and the gods’ monumental vanity give the narrative room to breathe. Zaretsky has an ear for the absurdity of people behaving badly while insisting that their intentions are excellent. Her quieter gestures of kindness land all the more effectively beside that comedy.

A restless structure, with rewards

The book’s 118 relatively short chapters move among several points of view, producing a brisk, almost cinematic rhythm. The shifts between ancient and modern timelines gradually reveal how closely the two stories are bound together. Occasionally, I wanted to remain with a character a little longer before the narrative moved elsewhere.

Certain emotional beats recur, particularly around the middle of the novel, where a little more restraint might have sharpened the momentum. Still, the overlapping perspectives become increasingly rewarding, and the accumulation of family detail gives the final stretch its weight. I remained invested in these people, even when they tested my patience.

Review copy disclosure: A reading copy of The Styx was provided for review consideration. This five-star rating and all opinions are my own. Content notes: addiction, substance use, gambling, death, grief and mental-health struggles.