It, too, is a story about a family living in their sheltered, upper-class small town (in this case, somewhere in Connecticut), experiencing aftershocks. That scene from Louder Than Bombs came to mind while I was reading Zoe Whittall's newest novel, The Best Kind of People.

The baffling delusion of traditions and memory lane. How some things change and how other things appear stuck in time. It's a quick sequence capturing the chronic display of high school's hierarchy while also illustrating the disorienting nature of returning home. 'I can't believe they still do this shit,' he says as the girls gab on the football field, having been launched into the air moments ago just as they are on the movie's poster. He avoids phone calls from his wife, who's taking care of their newborn in Manhattan, sleeps with his high school girlfriend, takes naps throughout the day, and one morning, he accompanies his younger brother to school, where they sit perched on bleachers, watching the cheerleading team prepare for practice. The eldest, who has returned to help his father sort through his mother's photographs – she was a famous war photographer and a retrospective of her work is being planned – relapses into a mild, destabilizing torpor. The car crash was a few years ago, not far from their upstate suburban home, and still haunts the husband and two sons. At first, the image of the girls mid-flight, wearing their uniform of red shorts, white tees and red ribbons in their hair, seems like a strange choice for an otherwise ruminative film about a family living through the aftermath of a mother's death. Last spring's poster for Norwegian director Joachim Trier's third film, Louder Than Bombs, features three high school cheerleaders, airborne against a blue sky.

The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall