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thechemicaldetective's review against another edition
5.0
Captivated by this book. Such an intimate portrait of a family, the ripples that fan out after a stone is dropped into smooth water. The initiating bombshell is the decision of elderly parents to separate, each family member receives the shocking news differently, but all take it personally. Interference and diffraction, human relationships in all their tangled, messy truth. Fabulously perceptive and seductive writing. Invisible translation - the highest praise possible. There's a lot of love in this book, along with decency and openness. I really didn't want the novel to end.
bianca89279's review against another edition
4.0
There's no such thing as a perfect family as there are no perfect people.
A Modern Family looks at what we think we know, what we show others and what others perceive, and that, ultimately, we never truly know anyone. Distressingly, we don't even know the closest people to us.
When a septuagenarian couple, married for over forty years, decides to divorce, their three adult children take the news quite differently. Their lives and what they thought they knew and experienced come into question. Was it all make-believe? Were their memories reliable? Their parents' divorce makes them look at their own separate lives, their relationships to their partners, to each other.
The characters ask questions regarding freedom, romantic love, societal expectations vs personal freedom - but is there such a thing as "freedom" when we are social animals. As they say, no (wo)man is an island.
This was an interesting novel, easily digestible but also very current and relatable.
A Modern Family looks at what we think we know, what we show others and what others perceive, and that, ultimately, we never truly know anyone. Distressingly, we don't even know the closest people to us.
When a septuagenarian couple, married for over forty years, decides to divorce, their three adult children take the news quite differently. Their lives and what they thought they knew and experienced come into question. Was it all make-believe? Were their memories reliable? Their parents' divorce makes them look at their own separate lives, their relationships to their partners, to each other.
The characters ask questions regarding freedom, romantic love, societal expectations vs personal freedom - but is there such a thing as "freedom" when we are social animals. As they say, no (wo)man is an island.
This was an interesting novel, easily digestible but also very current and relatable.
havardw's review against another edition
5.0
Må innrømme at jeg synes de to søstrene tar det litt vel tungt, men så er jo det gode med litteraturen å kunne kjenne på noe som jeg ikke helt er i stand til å føle selv. Dabber blittelitt av etter midten, men tar seg godt opp med et nytt perspektiv på slutten.
ebokhyllami's review against another edition
4.0
Er en moderne familie en familie hvor absolutt alle sliter med kjærligheten? Hvor besteforeldre skiller seg, søstre sliter med og uten menn og bror som vil leve i åpent forhold, men som plutselig føler på tvers av egen overbevisning? Ja kanskje det. Eller kanskje dette bare er en helt normal familie, i moderne tider sett fra mitt eget ståsted? Flatland har innsikt, humor, medrivende språk og en familie som kanskje ikke er så uvanlig likevel? Tankevekkende uansett, og kommer høyt opp på listene.
kellyvandamme's review against another edition
5.0
Hi and welcome to my stop on this Random Things Blog Tour for A Modern Family! First of all, many thanks to Anne Cater for the invitation and to Orenda Books for the e-copy!
To be perfectly honest, this is a book that I probably wouldn’t have picked up, if it hadn’t been published by Orenda Books. Odds are I would have dismissed it, thinking: nope, not my cup of tea, hard pass, I have thrillers to read! But over the last year or so, I have been picking up Orenda titles left right and centre, and not one of them let me down, regardless of genre. In fact, I have found myself falling in love with books in genres that I never thought I would enjoy so much, let alone adore. So now I’m at a point where I just accept anything Orenda Books throws at me, and I was thanking my lucky stars for that all throughout A Modern Family, because it was just that good! So today, I’m delighted to share my review with you!
A normal Norwegian family goes on holiday to Rome, courtesy of Sverre, the paterfamilias who is on the brink of turning seventy. A broken family returns.
Sverre and his wife Torill have three grown-up children, Liv, Ellen and Håkon. Liv has a family of her own, a husband and two children. Ellen is in a committed relationship. Håkon is single. The siblings are a tight-knit bunch, and they’re also close to their parents. But then Sverre announces that there’s to be a divorce, that he and his wife have grown apart, there’s nothing to look forward to anymore. Sverre and Torill think that that’s it, their decision, their lives. Neither has foreseen the impact on their family. And so, while a perfectly normal family went to Italy, a royally messed-up family returns.
With their parental unit in pieces, Liv and Ellen seem to have lost themselves too.
Liv is questioning her life, her marriage, her role as a mother, every single choice she’s ever made, and every little thing she does and thinks. I strongly related to Liv because I recognised a lot of myself in her. She doesn’t cope well with change, it throws her off, and she needs a minute (or a month) to regroup.
Ellen is desperately trying to get pregnant, losing herself, and estranging her boyfriend in the process. I have very little in common with Ellen, but this storyline broke my heart, there are some very poignant passages in there that made me all weepy.
Along the way, these sisters, who have a rocky past, but were always able to find each other again, somehow lose each other too. No more chitchat, no more easy banter. At this point in their lives when they need each other more than ever before, they can’t reach out to each other, they’ve become strangers.
The chapters alternate between Liv and Ellen while their brother remains a bit of an enigma until very late in the book, when we finally get to find out what his take is on all of this.
A Modern Family is an exploration of sibling relationships, which, as an only child, fascinate me. Having never experienced in the flesh what it is to have or to be a sibling, it’s a relationship that will always remain somewhat mysterious to me. However, I think that readers who do have siblings will enjoy this aspect of A Modern Family just as much as I have, with the difference that it will feel very familiar and recognisable to them, as much as it is foreign and exotic to me.
This is a compelling character study in terms of our relationship with our parents as well. No matter how old we are, our parents are the pillars of our family. They are the breeding grounds from which we stem. Even if they’re the worst parents ever, they still determine who we are, even if it is by making us reach for the complete opposite. So what happens when this unit, this foundation, this base of our personalities and own relationships falters, crumbles, ceases to exist? What happens to us, the children, adult though we may be? This is the question that A Modern Family explores, but not in an overly heavy way. As such I feel that the magic of A Modern Family is in the eye of the beholder, in the mind of the reader. This is a novel that can be taken at face value, a quick, light tale about an ordinary family. However, there is so much going on just below the surface, if the reader is willing to dig a little deeper, to a sublayer where A Modern Family is thought-provoking and invites you to look at your own relationships, be it with your parents, your siblings, your partners, and at you as a daughter or son, as a sister or brother, as a partner, as a person.
I knew very early on that this would be either a four-star or a five-star read. For me, it’s usually the finale that determines whether or not to add that extra star. And I have to admit, I didn’t really know what to make of that finale. It was rather abrupt and I felt utterly bereft, I was not ready for this tale to end. Afterwards I asked myself the question: what would you have happen instead, what ending would you have preferred? And frankly, I couldn’t answer that question. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the ending was totally in line with the story, and actually kind of perfect. To have it any other way would have felt forced. And so I stand by the statement I was making all through the second half of A Modern Family: I wouldn’t change a word, not a single one. I want to quote so many gorgeous sentences that got to me, but in doing so I would be giving away pieces of the plot, so I’ll tell you this instead: for the love of books and all that’s literary, please read A Modern Family!
One last shout-out to the translator, Rosie Hedger, for a job extremely well done!
To be perfectly honest, this is a book that I probably wouldn’t have picked up, if it hadn’t been published by Orenda Books. Odds are I would have dismissed it, thinking: nope, not my cup of tea, hard pass, I have thrillers to read! But over the last year or so, I have been picking up Orenda titles left right and centre, and not one of them let me down, regardless of genre. In fact, I have found myself falling in love with books in genres that I never thought I would enjoy so much, let alone adore. So now I’m at a point where I just accept anything Orenda Books throws at me, and I was thanking my lucky stars for that all throughout A Modern Family, because it was just that good! So today, I’m delighted to share my review with you!
A normal Norwegian family goes on holiday to Rome, courtesy of Sverre, the paterfamilias who is on the brink of turning seventy. A broken family returns.
Sverre and his wife Torill have three grown-up children, Liv, Ellen and Håkon. Liv has a family of her own, a husband and two children. Ellen is in a committed relationship. Håkon is single. The siblings are a tight-knit bunch, and they’re also close to their parents. But then Sverre announces that there’s to be a divorce, that he and his wife have grown apart, there’s nothing to look forward to anymore. Sverre and Torill think that that’s it, their decision, their lives. Neither has foreseen the impact on their family. And so, while a perfectly normal family went to Italy, a royally messed-up family returns.
With their parental unit in pieces, Liv and Ellen seem to have lost themselves too.
Liv is questioning her life, her marriage, her role as a mother, every single choice she’s ever made, and every little thing she does and thinks. I strongly related to Liv because I recognised a lot of myself in her. She doesn’t cope well with change, it throws her off, and she needs a minute (or a month) to regroup.
Ellen is desperately trying to get pregnant, losing herself, and estranging her boyfriend in the process. I have very little in common with Ellen, but this storyline broke my heart, there are some very poignant passages in there that made me all weepy.
Along the way, these sisters, who have a rocky past, but were always able to find each other again, somehow lose each other too. No more chitchat, no more easy banter. At this point in their lives when they need each other more than ever before, they can’t reach out to each other, they’ve become strangers.
The chapters alternate between Liv and Ellen while their brother remains a bit of an enigma until very late in the book, when we finally get to find out what his take is on all of this.
A Modern Family is an exploration of sibling relationships, which, as an only child, fascinate me. Having never experienced in the flesh what it is to have or to be a sibling, it’s a relationship that will always remain somewhat mysterious to me. However, I think that readers who do have siblings will enjoy this aspect of A Modern Family just as much as I have, with the difference that it will feel very familiar and recognisable to them, as much as it is foreign and exotic to me.
This is a compelling character study in terms of our relationship with our parents as well. No matter how old we are, our parents are the pillars of our family. They are the breeding grounds from which we stem. Even if they’re the worst parents ever, they still determine who we are, even if it is by making us reach for the complete opposite. So what happens when this unit, this foundation, this base of our personalities and own relationships falters, crumbles, ceases to exist? What happens to us, the children, adult though we may be? This is the question that A Modern Family explores, but not in an overly heavy way. As such I feel that the magic of A Modern Family is in the eye of the beholder, in the mind of the reader. This is a novel that can be taken at face value, a quick, light tale about an ordinary family. However, there is so much going on just below the surface, if the reader is willing to dig a little deeper, to a sublayer where A Modern Family is thought-provoking and invites you to look at your own relationships, be it with your parents, your siblings, your partners, and at you as a daughter or son, as a sister or brother, as a partner, as a person.
I knew very early on that this would be either a four-star or a five-star read. For me, it’s usually the finale that determines whether or not to add that extra star. And I have to admit, I didn’t really know what to make of that finale. It was rather abrupt and I felt utterly bereft, I was not ready for this tale to end. Afterwards I asked myself the question: what would you have happen instead, what ending would you have preferred? And frankly, I couldn’t answer that question. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the ending was totally in line with the story, and actually kind of perfect. To have it any other way would have felt forced. And so I stand by the statement I was making all through the second half of A Modern Family: I wouldn’t change a word, not a single one. I want to quote so many gorgeous sentences that got to me, but in doing so I would be giving away pieces of the plot, so I’ll tell you this instead: for the love of books and all that’s literary, please read A Modern Family!
One last shout-out to the translator, Rosie Hedger, for a job extremely well done!
btpbookclub's review against another edition
4.0
What a beautiful written story that shows the aftermath of a divorce in the family and how it can effect the family members in different ways. I loved reading this. It was an easy to devour read and quite short at 230 pages.
The story is told through the three siblings Liv, Ellen and Harkon. Each have their own personal problems going on but when their parents tell them about their pending divorce things start to change. I felt heartbroken for what Ellen had to go through it musn’t have been easy. Harkon I thought was a funny character with all his theories and he seemed very clever. A close knit famkly at first, will they all rekindle?
Brilliantly written, thoughtful and an inspiring story of the aftermath of divorce… It doesn’t matter what age you are it will still affect you. A well deserved four stars from me. Highly recommend.
The story is told through the three siblings Liv, Ellen and Harkon. Each have their own personal problems going on but when their parents tell them about their pending divorce things start to change. I felt heartbroken for what Ellen had to go through it musn’t have been easy. Harkon I thought was a funny character with all his theories and he seemed very clever. A close knit famkly at first, will they all rekindle?
Brilliantly written, thoughtful and an inspiring story of the aftermath of divorce… It doesn’t matter what age you are it will still affect you. A well deserved four stars from me. Highly recommend.
ingvilds's review against another edition
3.0
Jeg er ikke så glad i skrivestilen. Fra småting som bruk av klisjéer som ikke virker så godt motivert, til at det blir for tydelig hva de ulike karakterene føler og hva som er deres svake punkter. Jeg synes også de er overdrevent selvmedlidende, og på slutten glemte jeg innimellom at jeg leste fra brorens perspektiv, og ikke Liv, fordi språket de tenkte med var helt likt. Jeg savner dessuten mer tolkningsrom.
Utenom det liker jeg at karakterene er såpass flerdimensjonale som de er, med tydelige feil og mangler, boka er lettlest på en positiv måte og temaene i boka blir utforsket på en tidvis fengende måte (andre ganger virker beskrivelsene overfladiske og ikke spesielt interessante synes jeg).
Men glad jeg leste den! Til tross for irritasjonsmomenter fikk jeg også absolutt en del ut av den.
Utenom det liker jeg at karakterene er såpass flerdimensjonale som de er, med tydelige feil og mangler, boka er lettlest på en positiv måte og temaene i boka blir utforsket på en tidvis fengende måte (andre ganger virker beskrivelsene overfladiske og ikke spesielt interessante synes jeg).
Men glad jeg leste den! Til tross for irritasjonsmomenter fikk jeg også absolutt en del ut av den.
iaia77's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0