No surprises in this story of slow, achingly anticipated self-discovery, but the journey is engaging.
Three episodes in a young woman’s life expose the parental pressures that shape her personality and the consequences as she moves into adulthood.
The long chain of cause and effect within families is exposed in all its subtle, cumulative force in Flemish author op de Beeck’s second novel, her first to be translated into English. Spanning some 25 years, it opens in 1976 with Mona, a 9-year-old middle-class girl, shut in the dark, a punishment inflicted by her strict mother, Agnes. But then Agnes dies in a car accident, and her withdrawn husband, Vincent, quickly remarries, delivering a needy, manipulative stepmother, Marie, to Mona and her young brother, Alexander. Sensitive Mona, constantly anxious not to disappoint or anger her parents, feels responsible for taking care of Alex and, later, her new half sister, Anne-Sophie—even, at times, Marie too. In the second section, Mona is 24, living independently and holding down a prestigious job in the theater. She has friends and a lover who’s an established writer, but people treat her poorly and she permits it, tolerating second-rate relationships rather than confronting them. The last section heralds change, as Vincent succumbs to a life-threatening illness and begins to open up to his daughter about his real affections, about Agnes’ abusive father, and about the circumstances of Mona’s birth. These revelations, and a stranger’s pointed advice—“We forget what we’re worth and don’t dare believe that we genuinely deserve something good”—help Mona to begin the process of change. It’s a simple, predictable scenario and a long one, but there are poignant moments, especially in the late scenes with Victor; and seeing boundaries finally being drawn brings perennial satisfaction.
No surprises in this story of slow, achingly anticipated self-discovery, but the journey is engaging.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0544-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.
Named for an imperfectly worded fortune cookie, Hoover's (It Ends with Us, 2016, etc.) latest compares a woman’s relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she’s infertile.
Quinn meets her future husband, Graham, in front of her soon-to-be-ex-fiance’s apartment, where Graham is about to confront him for having an affair with his girlfriend. A few years later, they are happily married but struggling to conceive. The “then and now” format—with alternating chapters moving back and forth in time—allows a hopeful romance to blossom within a dark but relatable dilemma. Back then, Quinn’s bad breakup leads her to the love of her life. In the now, she’s exhausted a laundry list of fertility options, from IVF treatments to adoption, and the silver lining is harder to find. Quinn’s bad relationship with her wealthy mother also prevents her from asking for more money to throw at the problem. But just when Quinn’s narrative starts to sound like she’s writing a long Facebook rant about her struggles, she reveals the larger issue: Ever since she and Graham have been trying to have a baby, intimacy has become a chore, and she doesn’t know how to tell him. Instead, she hopes the contents of a mystery box she’s kept since their wedding day will help her decide their fate. With a few well-timed silences, Hoover turns the fairly common problem of infertility into the more universal problem of poor communication. Graham and Quinn may or may not become parents, but if they don’t talk about their feelings, they won’t remain a couple, either.
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7159-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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