About The Book
A fascinating novel that weaves in the individual stories of each family member and their struggles within themselves and with each other.
A multigenerational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple–still madly in love after forty years–recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they’ve built.
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that’s to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she’s not sure she wants by a man she’s not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents’.
As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt–given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before–we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons’ past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.
Goodreads
My Review: Worth A Read
This book starts slow, but the draw out allows you to be more invested in the character arcs and backstories, which I really enjoyed. I originally thought this was going to be a straightforward novel about a married couple whose relationship was slowly deteriorating, but the story was so much richer than that. It was also really interesting to see how different the sisters’ personalities developed despite obviously having the same set of parents. Just goes to show how differently we experience similar things.
There are so many great quotes in this book as well! Especially with regards to relationships/marriage – see below for excerpts. I loved the writing.
Matt was gravely concerned about it; he met every mention leading up to the evening with an Are you sure you want to do that look, the kind of look that said, I’m not going to stop you but only because I’d rather you stop yourself. For this reason, proceeding with the dinner also gave her a certain satisfaction, that childish fuck-you logic present in most marriages, the contrarian impulse to do something simply because your husband didn’t want you to.
*
“Have I ever wanted to punch him in the face? Yes. Has he ever said something that made me question the very construction of the universe?” Wine made her mother poetic. “Of course. But have I ever not wanted him around?” Another sip. “No. In another room? God yes. Silenced somewhere far away? Absolutely.”
“But never anything major,” Liza said. She and Ryan had met in college. On paper, it was the perfect equation for a simple, stubborn union. Meet someone when you’re both too young to realize how stupid you are. Learn all of their oddities and secrets before they have a chance to create more of them beyond your control.
*
“I really don’t need to hear reassurance from you that my husband loves me.” She pulled her coat more closely around her and started toward the door.
“I wasn’t going to tell you that. I was just going to say that he’s a good man.”
Marilyn stopped. “I know he is.”
She supposed that was part of the problem. Her husband was a good man. It was hard to get mad at him. And perhaps it was this – the anticlimax of it all – that frustrated her so much. He hadn’t had a traditional affair. She’d confronted first him and then his alleged mistress and both had sincerely denied it. But what they weren’t denying was their closeness, the fact that David had actively chosen to spend hours and hours of his limited time with another woman, to confide in someone else his worries and observations. She felt – as she had three years ago, crying in the exam room – so far from him. She could identify that as the the problem – not just the distance but the fact that it had grown so much since then, that it was so much more dire than it had been – and there was nothing she could do about it.
*
How she loved him, missed him, wanted to kill him. If someone asked her to poetically describe her marriage, she would articulate that particular feeling, one of simultaneously wanting him pressed against her and also on another continent.
Why You Should Read It
If you’ve always wondered why you and siblings have such WILDLY DIFFERENT personalities, you’ll enjoy this insight into a chaotic family.