The writing in this book was simply beautiful. How can some 200 page books draaaaag on and yet this 540 page book was completely effortless to read?
Don’t let that intimidate you! I would have happily read 600 more pages once I finished. How can I put into words how much I absolutely LOVED this book? Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read. It was a happy day indeed when the library called to tell me that my copy was waiting! I wasted no time and started reading that very night. **If I would have known how much I was going to love it, I would have just bought the book :)** I checked that website allllllll summer for updates and slowly, slowly, slowly my name moved up on the list. As you know, I’m a proud minimalist and reaaaaally didn’t want to buy a copy…so #43 on the list for me it was. I took out my phone on the spot and immediately went straight to my library’s website to gain my place on the waitlist. It had been on my radar since last spring and I couldn’t wait for it to be released! However, I ultimately made the classic booknerd mistake and the release date (6.25.19) somehow slipped right through my fingers! Ugh! I was innocently shopping at Costco when I made the unfortunate discovery that this had been released. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I spent all summer not so patiently waiting for my turn to read this book. (Disclaimer: I will never post spoilers in my reviews HOWEVER the comment section is completely fair game to discuss any and all specifics including spoilers) In painting this luminous portrait of a family’s becoming, Lombardo joins the ranks of writers such as Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathan Franzen as visionary chroniclers of our modern lives. Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the quintessential American backdrop of Chicago and its prospering suburbs, Lombardo’s debut explores the triumphs and burdens of love, the fraught tethers of parenthood and sisterhood, and the baffling mixture of affection, abhorrence, resistance, and submission we feel for those closest to us.
Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents’.Īs 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. 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. When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that’s to come. This book took me on such an emotional roller coaster…I absolutely loved it.Ī dazzling, 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. I laughed, I sobbed, and I felt everything in between while reading this beautiful story. It’s such a beautiful book in every way and I absolutely loved reading it. If you haven’t yet read this book, you MUST.
I knew just from reading the synopsis that I would love this book but I had no idea that it would gain a coveted spot as one of the best books I’ve ever read (quite possibly THE best book I’ve ever read).
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