Same As It Ever Was
The immersive and joyful new novel from the author of Reese’s Bookclub pick THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 18 Jun 2024
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- 13,99 €
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- Pre-Order
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
'Witty and insightful. A powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self'
BONNIE GARMUS, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
''It was such a pleasure to bury myself in this book, a literary novel of family life which moved and surprised me. You read on ravenously'
CLARE CHAMBERS, author of SMALL PLEASURES
The author of THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD returns with a brilliantly observed family drama, in which a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present
At fifty-seven, Julia Ames has found herself with an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination towards self-sabotage, she has a husband she loves, two happy children and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs.
But, out of the blue, things begin to change.
Her always well-behaved son, Ben, is acting strangely, and will soon make a shocking announcement.
Her beloved but belligerent teenage daughter is about to depart for college, leaving Julia unexpectedly terrified of an empty nest.
And, in the local grocery store, Julia encounters a woman she hasn't seen for 20 years - a woman whose friendship was once both her lifeline and, very nearly, her downfall.
Consumed with her checkered past and the chaos of her present, Julia starts to spin out of control, at risk of destroying all she most loves.
Following Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months, bookended by a birthday party and a wedding, and examining the fifty-plus years before, Same as It Ever Was examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to make - and to not break - a family.
PRAISE FOR CLAIRE LOMBARDO:
'A literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler' GUARDIAN
'Lombardo juggles a huge cast of characters with seeming effortlessness, bringing each to life with humour, vividness and acute psychological insight' MADELINE MILLER, author of SONG OF ACHILLES
'Lombardo has a wry, often spiky humour and tightly written style that should appeal to fans of Maria Semple, Emma Straub and Jennifer Egan' SUNDAY TIMES
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lombardo (The Most Fun We Ever Had) returns with the pitch-perfect tale of a complicated friendship and the fallout from an extramarital affair. Julia Ames, 57, is a married mother of two living in a Chicago suburb. While grocery shopping for her husband's 60th birthday dinner, she encounters an older woman named Helen Russo, one of the "small handful of people whom she has truly hoped to never encounter again." Julia first met Helen 20 years earlier in the botanic garden where she used to take her first child, Ben, when he was three. Back then, in her "pre-Helen energy," Julia was a "hollow-eyed, socially inept young mom" who cried easily. Helen, a wealthy retired attorney and mother of five, took Julia and Ben under her wing, welcoming them into her charmingly messy "Capital-H Home," where people were cheerfully discerning about wine and casually referenced their distinguished forebears. Julia, who came from modest means and was estranged from her mother, was enchanted. Lombardo effortlessly flits from Julia's present-day party preparations and other family occasions—Ben's wedding, her daughter's departure for college—to flashbacks of the women's burgeoning friendship, slowly building to the reason for its dissolution two years after it began: Julia's affair with Helen's 29-year-old son, Nathaniel, who had the "biceps of a Renaissance sculpture." Lombardo is compulsively readable and consistently funny, and it's impossible to look away as Julia continues to self-sabotage. This domestic drama hits all the right notes.
