This Is How It Always Is: A Novel
By: Laurie Frankel / Narrated By: Gabra Zackman
Length: 11 hrs
Beautiful, and I coooould pick at nits, but this is so heartfelt, I just don’t wanna!
Big Sis listened to This Is How It Always Is, and when she said she could NOT stop listening, dude! I was sooo there!
So I started it, and I could NOT stop listening…!
In a nutshell, the beautiful relationship between Rosie and Penn as they navigate being wife and husband, and being mom and dad. To five, count ‘em, FIVE! boys. The first son, Roo was rejoiced over. The second son, Ben, as well. The third child? A surprising set of twins; tho’ a daughter woulda been nice, they’re both celebrated. But can Rosie and Penn stop?
Welllll, you see: Penn was an only child, and he remembers the loneliness. Plus, he loves Rosie, knows her hankering for a little girl, and he’s game, knowing how much joy their family brings him. Rosie? When she was only 12-years old, she’d had a little sister, a girl named Poppy who died of cancer at age 10. Rosie would deeearly love to have a daughter, one she could name Poppy as well. And so she gets into all sorts of gyrations and schemes to make sure that this child is a girl (Moves the bed so that it faces East and West rather than North and South cuz EVERYbody knows THAT practically makes a girl definite!). But? Child #5 comes along, bursting into the world at the speed of light, and he is joyfully named Claude, Poppy be danged—it just ain’t gonna happen.
Each son is celebrated, and whilst Rosie works nights as a doctor in a fast-paced hospital, Penn is the stay at home dad where he can look after the boys -and- work on his novel -and- get the boys ready for bed, an ongoing fairy tale of a Prince being created for his sons as they grow up and get older, never too old for this never-ending story.
Then Claude starts showing himself, asking for the story to have a Princess in it. And he’d dearly love to wear a nice dress. And when he puts on plays, he plays the role of a Princess… in a nice dress… and oh yeh? When he grows up, can he be a girl?
Given the social strife we’re all in here and now, I sooo loved this book for showing rather than telling, for teaching rather than preaching. And for showing just what a loving family can do… and how they can start to fall apart.
It’s a lie, a big lie that Rosie and Penn don’t meeean to be a lie when they let Claude be who he is, which is now a little girl named Poppy. They’ve tried to protect Poppy by moving the family to a more enlightened place, Seattle; but when they tell the new neighbors about Poppy being transgender, there’s a hush after a comment about Drag Queens. Soon there’s a hesitant acceptance… followed by a hearty: All is cool, your sons and Poppy can play with our kids, but we don’t feel comfortable telling our kids about anatomy… and all that.
Strain, strife, peace, joy, the pains of growing up and knowing that Mom and Dad, tho’ they pound morality down our throats, are actually making us all live the biggest Lie possible. That it’s always about Poppy and what Poppy wants, that there’s more to Life than Poppy. How does a family deal with that, four sons, sworn to secrecy but forced by Life and Society to defend that which they might not completely understand but which they DO completely love?
Author Laurie Frankel writes with such sensitivity and with such excellent plotting that this is a Listen All At One Go kinda story. Cuz tho’ there’s a huuuge section of how it’s all hearts and flowers for Poppy when she’s little? What’s really going on as the sons try to forge their own identities, deal with their own hormones and trials? And just what on gosh’s green earth is going to happen as Poppy gets older and… ta-DAH: Puberty?!
This is an education, but it’s such a truly beautiful look at family members doing the best they can with Life as it’s lived, experienced, sometimes fought for, sometimes betrayed. Cuz very few secrets can be kept, and when it hits the fan, blood can be shed. And there can be heart-stopping Jane Does showing up at the hospital, a mother’s worst nightmare of a future that could just be her own much-adored child.
Sis and I had a lengthy discussion regarding the entirety of the book, and whereas we both truly loved this book, we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on some of the particulars. I thought it was waaaay too convenient for Poppy to be NOT at ALL aware of her own physicality. She has an offending body part, for heaven’s sake, one that makes her so very much not the complete female she wishes to be. She’s completely unselfconscious, and Sis posited that it was, as a confidant tells Rosie and Penn, due to them making her feel too safe. I beg to differ, even maaaaay’ve considered wondering whattheHECK? at certain points, say, sleepovers where changing into jammies causes not the least bit of a hesitation for Poppy.
But, see? Considering I’ve kinda sorta been harsh to a couple of this week’s audiobooks… Ya know what? Here, I just don’t wanna. This is a lovely, lovely story, p’raps not completely wise, but certainly well-intentioned, and DEFinitely well-executed. And Gabra Zackman? Dude, she adds sooo much to where I miiight’ve totally given a Pass where I’d otherwise Sneer at what coulda been answers that come too easily. Zackman not only portrays a wide variety, a plethora of characters, but what I liked about the writing is made totally clear by her narration: These are individuals going through A LOT, and sometimes they’re not sure about how to move forward, take that next Please God Please God Pretty Please proper step. Zackman delivers innocence, worry, angst, joy and youthful exuberance, and complete and utter terror and despair. This is just THAT kinda a story.
Yup, I could pick a nit or two with the ending as well, but nope! not gonna. Cuz we all have dreams, we all have desperate hopes, and if we’re blessed, we all have people in our lives to love and wish the best for.
Is this a story, a story that goes on and on, ever-changing, ever-adapting, hit with fraught parts as Lives Go On?
Oh gosh, how I hope so…
Characters you just love.
I’m tellin’ ya.
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