This Is How It Always Is
‘It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think' Liane Moriarty
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4.2 • 12 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
'Hilarious and heart-stoppingly emotional' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'A fabulous book. Topical, moving, full of magic' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'I was captivated by the story of the love and acceptance this family shares for each other' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'Amazing, detailed, honest and enlightening. 100% recommend' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
'It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think' Liane Moriarty, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies
This is how a family keeps a secret . . . and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after . . . until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change . . . and then change the world.
This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.
Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.
'Thought-provoking and topical' Woman & Home
'Touching' Good Housekeeping
'An astonishing balance of humour, complexity, and above all, kindness' Ruth Ozeki
'Wonderful, magical' Red
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A contemporary fable grounded in a rapidly changing world, This Is How It Always Is proves to be a gorgeous ode to tolerance. When the youngest of five school-age sons starts wearing dresses and voicing a desire to be a girl, his family sets out to explore just what that means. Drawn in part from Seattle author Laurie Frankel’s personal life, this novel beams with compassion. By turns joyously playful and decidedly frank, Frankel celebrates the expanding number of paths to “normal”.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Frankel's third novel is about the large, rambunctious Walsh-Adams family. While Penn writes his "DN" (damn novel) and spins fractured fairy tales from the family's ramshackle farmhouse in Madison, Wis., Rosie works as an emergency physician. Four sons have made the happily married couple exhausted and wanting a daughter; alas, their fifth is another boy. Extraordinarily verbal little Claude is quirky and clever, traits that run in the family, and at age three says, "I want to be a girl." Claude is the focus, but Frankel captures the older brothers' boyish grossness. She also fleshes out his two eldest brothers, who worry about Claude's safety when Rosie and Penn agree that Claude can be Poppy at school. But coming out further isolates this unique child. Encouragement from a therapist and an accepting grandma can go just so far; Poppy only blossoms after the Walsh-Adamses move to progressive Seattle and keep her trans status private, although what is good for Poppy is increasingly difficult on her brothers. The story takes a darker turn when she is outed; Rosie and her youngest must find their footing while Penn stays at home with the other kids. Frankel's (The Atlas of Love) slightly askew voice, exemplified by Rosie and Penn's nontraditional gender roles, keeps the narrative sharp and surprising. This is a wonderfully contradictory story heartwarming and generous, yet written with a wry sensibility.
