This Is How It Always Is: A Novel
Description
New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
"Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)
Bustle's 17 Books Every Woman Should Read From 2017
PopSugar's Our Favorite Books of the Year (So Far)
Refinery29's Best Books of the Year So Far
BookBrowse's The 20 Best Books of 2017
Pacific Northwest Book Awards Finalist
The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2017
Longlisted for 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award
"It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think." --Liane Moriarty, #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.
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Community Reviews
This book clearly (and not so clearly, in its own way) described what it’s like to be “in the middle”. Other. Not quite fitting in box A or B and there’s no other option. It’s a reminder that sometimes, family is all you have, and sometimes, people you think you can trust will betray you. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. You can always adjust, pivot, and continue building your path, whatever that may look like.
While this subject was important and interesting, I had so many grievances while reading and would not recommend this book. Her writing style is very aggravating - very long for no compelling reason. Her dialogue for characters is very unrealistic, especially the dialogue written for the young characters. The dialogue is far too sophisticated and convenient. Conversations between Rosie and Penn felt like lectures - I pictured two people in a room...read more
This is a beautiful story. It goes something like this: First, there was Claude. But Claude felt that being a boy wasn't quite right. So around the start of kindergarten, Claude started wearing dresses. Sometimes this was a big deal (for other people), sometimes it wasn't. Claude (and Claude's parents) were just figuring it out as they went along (with the help of a very quirky (in the best way) guru cum therapist). Not long after, Claude b...read more
The Book gets too much into the mother's work near the end, which totally eludes the main focus--Poppy.
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