2024 the best fiction book ever review

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(as of Nov 24, 2024 23:08:10 UTC - Details)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK BY PEOPLE AND PARADE • The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.

“Infidelity, dysfunction, secrets – this family novel delivers."—The New York Times • "Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family’s fabric." —The Washington Post • “Witty and insightful...a powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self.”–Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo’s debut was dubbed “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler” (The Guardian) and hailed as “ambitious and brilliantly written” (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up—another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng—Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.

She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.

From the Publisher

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CJBRZBVF
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday (June 18, 2024)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 18, 2024
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3509 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0385549555
Reviewer: carilynp
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Family drama at its finest. What an incredible story.
Review: When reading fiction, family drama is my favorite genre. Perhaps it’s because it’s the most relatable. Both the sweetness and the difficulty. A regular, not too far-fetched family, fully formed characters, garden variety upheavals, and the bittersweet passages of time, bring them on. What makes this richly told story a standout is how perceptive it is. Among other things.Julia has an enviable life by most people’s standards. But that’s not how she feels. We meet her during an everyday activity. She’s at a specialty grocery store shopping for ingredients for a dish she’ll make for her husband’s 60th birthday when she bumps into Helen, a woman she used to be close friends with, someone who altered the course of her life, yet someone she never wanted to see again. It is such a tense moment, a possible turning point, eager to know their history, what’s to become of their future. When Julia and Helen initially met, Julia was a mom to a young son, unsure of herself, lonely, she’s immediately drawn to Helen, 20 years her senior, a seasoned mother of five adult sons. As we watch their relationship develop over the course of many years, we see different seasons of motherhood, Julia’s own stormy relationship with her mom, marital conflict, and how Julia navigates life through the filter that is Helen.My goodness, this book is incredible. Heartbreaking, messy, it's life. The minute I finished it, I read Lombardo’s first novel, THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD. I’m a forever fan.

Reviewer: Anna Gekhter
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The book is excellent!
Review: Claire Lombardo does it again. Perfect writing, deep characters. I would have put five stars but I really hated main character, the way the author portrayed her. To me the heroine was actually anti-heroine, it is just like putting the villain in the glory of the nice written book. Sort of disappointing

Reviewer: warbler
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A bit longish but
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this family drama. Long as it was, I hated to see it end. This masterpiece is similar in storyline to Ms. Lombardo' first novel, which is equally good. Very relatable human characters and relationships in both of these family sagas.

Reviewer: Joanie W.
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good story but exhausting writing style
Review: The story and characters are engaging, even if it’s difficult to like the protagonist very much. But the near-exclusive use of run-on, stream-of-consciousness, parenthetical-within-parenthetical sentences makes the story almost impossible to read. You have to keep going back a page or more to where the sentence breaks off with a dash to piece together the flood of thoughts or figure out who’s talking or being referred to. I’m sure the author thought this was an effective mechanism to reflect the insecurity of the main character, but I’d argue that the same characterization would have come through clearly with the sentences broken up and far fewer parenthetical, overly punctuated phrases in use. With this writing style, the book felt way too long for the story being told because of the tedium of the prose. If you take the time to dissect any given sentence, you will find original, creative descriptions and characterization, but you’re likely to miss these good parts of the writing, because you’re likely to skip chunks of text for temporary relief.

Reviewer: paulam
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Kind of a slog through a very well written novel
Review: I had a hard time w this one - I loved the writing but hated the main character.It took waaaaaaay too long to tell the story - the author needed a better editor.Near the end I thought it was never going to end.Loved her former novel.....this one not so much.

Reviewer: Wendy Scaggs
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Oh My Goodness!!!!!!!!!
Review: I am 1/3 way through this EXCELLENT BOOK!!!! This is not a book you can” skim” or hurry through. I swear… EVERY sentence… heck.. every WORD , affects the story line. All I can say, so far, is this is one of the most REAL .. HUMAN.. stories I have ever Read/ FELT. Ok. Gotta go back to the book. 👏. So…. I finished this AMAZING book yesterday… I felt like I’d lost a family member …. I read a LOT… THIS author is so in touch with… well…LIFE ….Please take the timeTo ENJOY this special family saga. All the flaws .. the love .. the sorrow.. ALL of it. I amBetter for reading this.

Reviewer: Julie Merilatt
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent follow up to The Most Fun We Ever Had
Review: I found there was a lot to relate to in this book because, like Julia, I have an English degree, I’m married to an engineer, I live in a nice Chicago suburb, and I had a strained relationship with a parent. The narrative shifts between Julia’s current situation and her past. Current: a steady marriage to Mark, son Ben who is a graduate student, a high school senior Alma, and a really comfortable life. Past: a troubled upbringing with her mother Anita, her early years as a wife and mother, and her friendship with matronly Helen, who takes Julia under her wing when she most needs it.Julia is far from perfect and she struggles to maintain a façade of calm and normalcy when sometimes all she wants to do is mentally collapse. Her mom Anita is insufferable and it’s no wonder Julia is so fragile. Mark is the exact opposite, a composed and steady influence, despite Julia’s missteps in their marriage. I adored Helen and was sorry when Julia jeopardized their friendship. Yes, Julia is a basket-case, but she is so believably insecure and pessimistic and vulnerable. This was a great follow up to Lombardo’s debut.

Reviewer: Ruth Haan
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Gets You to Think about Your own Life
Review: You’ll get to know this family. The story is so like real life. You’ll read about their experiences, good and bad. You will think about yours and how beautiful and awful and complex life is.

Reviewer: Rose Marie Chamberlain
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I enjoyed this book and look forward to more of this author’s novels .

Reviewer: wheresdavegone
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Beautifully written. A very well crafted journey through a mothers life, a persons life, exploring relationships and the impact they have on our lives. Would definitely recommend

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The plot is engaging and I enjoyed reading about the relationships between the characters, but it’s almost distracting how annoying the main character is. Picture a person who, after winning $10 million, would complain that her bank account now had too many zeroes to keep track of and you’ve got our main character. The author is talented enough that I can only assume she knows how irritating her main character is and wrote her this way on purpose.

Reviewer: Sandra Adilman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A very well written and interesting, complicated plot - would recommend this book to friends.

Reviewer: Bettylou
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I loved her first book and this was equally well written. The characters all very believable and have good/bad aspects to them. Some really true and accurate observations about people and life. However I found it overall depressing and can't wait to now read something a bit lighter in tone.