melannrosenthal's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
isg328's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
veingloria's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 rounded down.
This was so close to being a 3.5 rounded up, but the last quarter of the novel landed completely flat for me and extinguished some of my goodwill for this story and these characters.
Frangello’s prose is immediately engrossing, rife with poetic melancholy. It is without a doubt the strongest element of this novel. I’m not sure if she has any poetry efforts under her belt, but I would love to see some from her. Her prose introduces flow and beauty into otherwise unpleasant or meandering scenes. This is ultimately what kept me turning the pages.
The questions that this story asks—what constitutes a family and who bears responsibility for their role in it—are interesting ones, but I don’t think they were answered in a satisfactory way.
Melodrama is an essential component of a story like this and it’s what I expected going in, but there’s a fine line between melodrama and soap opera. The story veers toward the latter as it progresses to the point where it threw me out of the story. I guess the characters’ personalities lend themselves well to a soap opera, though.
It’s difficult to wade through a story where everyone is kind of a shitty person. The only person who wasn’t awful was Chad, whose liberal charity betrays the kind of ignorant cheeriness that characterizes the upper crust of society. Gretchen is a stereotypical wife and mother trapped in a loveless marriage with a terrible man and she conspires to snatch Miguel and Chad’s child away from them; Nick is a cheating POS whose actions speak of utter selfishness, and Lina is much the same; Emily is a burn pit of resentment and contempt; and Miguel is an emotionally repressed mess with an airport’s worth of baggage.
You might argue that this is a very plausible group of characters and I would agree, but plausible does not make for a compelling or enjoyable read. It was difficult to discern whether Frangello intended to elicit sympathy for these people or whether she merely wanted to offer a window into their lives and allow us to make our own judgments. The navel-gazing of the last 25% of the book would suggest the former, but that’s purely speculation.
Spoilers, but I found it kinda gross and cheap that the climax of the story involves Emily dying. It felt like the easy way out rather than seeing her arc and development through to the end. She dies bitter and unfulfilled and her good-for-nothing husband gets to keep on. The timeskip also makes her death feel cheap especially given that the last line of her POV is Save me.
Despite my issues with this story, it’s still a very readable book about very unlikeable people. Frangello’s prose and emotional rendering are compelling enough to soften the edges.
This was so close to being a 3.5 rounded up, but the last quarter of the novel landed completely flat for me and extinguished some of my goodwill for this story and these characters.
Frangello’s prose is immediately engrossing, rife with poetic melancholy. It is without a doubt the strongest element of this novel. I’m not sure if she has any poetry efforts under her belt, but I would love to see some from her. Her prose introduces flow and beauty into otherwise unpleasant or meandering scenes. This is ultimately what kept me turning the pages.
The questions that this story asks—what constitutes a family and who bears responsibility for their role in it—are interesting ones, but I don’t think they were answered in a satisfactory way.
Melodrama is an essential component of a story like this and it’s what I expected going in, but there’s a fine line between melodrama and soap opera. The story veers toward the latter as it progresses to the point where it threw me out of the story. I guess the characters’ personalities lend themselves well to a soap opera, though.
It’s difficult to wade through a story where everyone is kind of a shitty person. The only person who wasn’t awful was Chad, whose liberal charity betrays the kind of ignorant cheeriness that characterizes the upper crust of society. Gretchen is a stereotypical wife and mother trapped in a loveless marriage with a terrible man and she conspires to snatch Miguel and Chad’s child away from them; Nick is a cheating POS whose actions speak of utter selfishness, and Lina is much the same; Emily is a burn pit of resentment and contempt; and Miguel is an emotionally repressed mess with an airport’s worth of baggage.
You might argue that this is a very plausible group of characters and I would agree, but plausible does not make for a compelling or enjoyable read. It was difficult to discern whether Frangello intended to elicit sympathy for these people or whether she merely wanted to offer a window into their lives and allow us to make our own judgments. The navel-gazing of the last 25% of the book would suggest the former, but that’s purely speculation.
Spoilers, but I found it kinda gross and cheap that the climax of the story involves Emily dying. It felt like the easy way out rather than seeing her arc and development through to the end. She dies bitter and unfulfilled and her good-for-nothing husband gets to keep on. The timeskip also makes her death feel cheap especially given that the last line of her POV is Save me.
Despite my issues with this story, it’s still a very readable book about very unlikeable people. Frangello’s prose and emotional rendering are compelling enough to soften the edges.
jessicaboi's review against another edition
3.0
I loved this when I started, and then got bored. A candidate for a re-read, potentially. Loved the Chicago setting.
laurenreadslit's review against another edition
2.0
This book actually gets off to an excellent start. It’s got all the components a dramatic familial novel needs: history, complicated relationships, characters that are just unlikeable enough to be relatable. Suddenly, though, so many things go wrong...and not just in the plot (that, at least, would make for an interesting read) but with the style, the narrative and the characterizations.
The chapters are titled for characters and I typically like when books are written this way, but the identity of the narrator was so unclear for so much of the book that it derailed the story. I found it hard to keep up with who was who and who felt which way about the other. There is also entirely too much going on. Two cheating husbands, two abusive fathers, two children with disabilities, one too many deaths and more family secrets than the reader needed.
Sometimes, an author can do such a great job of weaving all of these things together in a concise story that keeps the reader’s attention. Sometimes, an author doesn’t have to be concise at all in narrating a sweeping multi-generational family story (see: Pachinko or The Heart’s Invisible Furies) and the reader is still tuned in to every word, phrase, chapter. This was not either of those. There were three books worth of plot in this book and not enough time to tell it all, revelations suddenly flying at the reader when the clock was running out.
The chapters are titled for characters and I typically like when books are written this way, but the identity of the narrator was so unclear for so much of the book that it derailed the story. I found it hard to keep up with who was who and who felt which way about the other. There is also entirely too much going on. Two cheating husbands, two abusive fathers, two children with disabilities, one too many deaths and more family secrets than the reader needed.
Sometimes, an author can do such a great job of weaving all of these things together in a concise story that keeps the reader’s attention. Sometimes, an author doesn’t have to be concise at all in narrating a sweeping multi-generational family story (see: Pachinko or The Heart’s Invisible Furies) and the reader is still tuned in to every word, phrase, chapter. This was not either of those. There were three books worth of plot in this book and not enough time to tell it all, revelations suddenly flying at the reader when the clock was running out.
sherylk's review
4.0
A new friend Liz recommended this to me, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. The premise seemed unnecessarily complicated and "Portlandia"-ish: when a gay couple decide to have a baby, they use an egg from one of their sisters, and then a gestational carrier who is an old friend of the other's from high school. The book jacket described this as the raising of a "community baby," but I found it to be much much more.
What I liked most about this book was the characters. There are four incredibly well-developed characters, each with backstories and motives. Then there are at least five other characters with their own histories and stories. This mastery of character development probably most reminded me of [b:This is Where I Leave You|6224935|This is Where I Leave You|Jonathan Tropper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467397162s/6224935.jpg|6405647].
I did enjoy the story as well, but this was one of those book that was more about the journey than the destination.
What I liked most about this book was the characters. There are four incredibly well-developed characters, each with backstories and motives. Then there are at least five other characters with their own histories and stories. This mastery of character development probably most reminded me of [b:This is Where I Leave You|6224935|This is Where I Leave You|Jonathan Tropper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467397162s/6224935.jpg|6405647].
I did enjoy the story as well, but this was one of those book that was more about the journey than the destination.
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