Book Review: This Is How It Always Is

 Book Review: This Is How It Always Is.

If you’ve been around for a while, you might notice that this is my first book review, despite writing about books and talking about books often in passing during posts and on my socials. There’s a good reason for that, though. When I launch my new offshoot Lifestyle Blog in the fall, I will be focusing on the important parts of my lifestyle and sharing bits of what makes me tick (other than food). So, of course, books and plants and fashion will be high up on that list. So much so that I’ll have a category for all three and weekly installments in each.

So this is just a taste of what is to come.

Synopsis

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.
When Rosie and Penn and their four boys welcome the newest member of their family, no one is surprised it’s another baby boy. But at least their large, loving, chaotic family knows what to expect.
But Claude is not like his brothers. One day he puts on a dress and refuses to take it off. He wants to bring a purse to kindergarten. He wants hair long enough to sit on. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn aren’t panicked at first. Kids go through phases, after all, and make-believe is fun. But soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.
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. (1) 

General Thoughts

This is a book about a non-binary child. Or a book about a boy who wants to be a girl when he grows up. Or a boy who wants to wear dresses and have long hair now, while he’s still a boy.

Or, on a deeper level, this is a novel about family and love and what it means to be human.

When I first approached this book I did not know what to expect. With all of the uproar surrounding Transgender females in sports and Title 9 and the confusion and hatred swirling around this topic, I will admit I started it with a lump in my throat. I love to read books about challenging subjects that don’t hold back, ones that tell the story with a big heart so you can gain empathy and understanding of the “other” side. But I also don’t like reading books where the agenda is louder than the plot or the characters.

So when I first began This Is How It Always Is, I was hesitant, afraid it wouldn’t be story and character-driven, instead, relying on trite stereotypes to drive home an agenda without really showing me the heart behind the issue.

I was pleasantly surprised because it was none of those things.

This is the story of Penn and Rosie, parents to a crazy brood of boys, all with personalities as vividly painted as if they were characters on the screen. As a family, they are funny, messy, alive, and chaotic.  Penn is a writer, a progressive, and a dreamer. Rosie is a doctor, more rational, more scientific. This contradiction is important as the story develops. Their last child, a boy named Claude, is “normal” by all accounts. Until he isn’t. Until he wants to wear dresses and grow his hair. Until he carries a purse to school every day as a lunchbox.

Until, of course, Penn and Rosie are forced to reconcile what normal actually means and make incredibly difficult choices for their child.

What I Loved

This Is How It Always Is is an important novel. It’s so important, in fact, that I think all humans should be required to read it.

Of course, that won’t happen. But it is important because it shows the human side of this very polarizing debate. The development of Claude’s identity and the gradual dawn of reality for both parents paints a picture of children who don’t fit within the “norms,” and the families who love them no matter what.

I thought it was a brilliant stroke of genius to write Penn and Rosie as progressive parents. They are not traditional in their family roles and are written as very open-minded, yet still (still) they struggle with the life-long implications of their child’s gender identity and have doubts and fears that are visceral and real. Frankel does an incredible job flaying the heart of this family wide open, painting their struggle with wide bold brushstrokes filled with color and vibrancy. There are no simple decisions when the easy choice, living what the world prescribes as “normal,” is also the choice that might break your child.

“Such a tough life. This is not the easy way.”
“No,” Penn agreed, “but I’m not sure easy is what I want for the kids anyway.”
She looked up at him. “Why the hell not?”
“I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah. I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on tv. But if I can’t have everything, if I only get a few, I’m not sure easy makes my wish list.”
“Really?”
“Easy is nice. But its not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in,” said Penn. “Easy is nice. But I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.”
“Easy probably rules out having children,” Rosie admitted.
“Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world’s problems, overcoming your own. I don’t know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there’s not much of it I’d trade for easy either, I don’t think.”

Do Penn and Rosie always make the right decisions for Claude and their other children? No. Of course, they don’t. Moving across the country when things get a little dicey for Claude is maybe the right reaction (albeit a knee-jerk one) for Claude/Poppy, but it’s not for their other boys, whose suffering as the “normal” children in the family is well-written and realistic.

But what parent always makes the right decisions? Even on our best day?

None of us. And the portrayal of their struggle felt real and alive. In many novels, you, the reader, understand what is right and wrong and how, as the universal reader with the entire big picture under your thumb, things will work out for the best. But in this case, you don’t see that. You feel the unknowns. You feel the pain of being rejected for who you are and the fierceness of a parent’s love for his or her children. But you don’t quite know the magic solution that will make it all work out.

And that, too, is parenting.

“This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decision on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands. Who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up – if with your incomplete contradictory information you make the wrong call – nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.”

What I Didn’t Love

If you read the reviews for This Is How It Always Is, you’ll get a mixed bag. A lot of people loved it as I did. But there are two main issues many reviewers have with the book–the writing style and the #firstworldproblems of Penn and Rosie.

The writing style is unique. Frankel writes in an almost stream-of-consciousness way, with long sentences and run-on thoughts. Personally, I did not mind this and didn’t notice it until I read the reviews. Could be because I write and think like that, too, so it seemed normal to me. But it also could be that she is witty enough and creative enough with how she uses the long sentences that it seems to work for the narrative, breathing light and sometimes humor into a very sensitive topic. This is, to me, the work of a deft and talented pen.

The #firstworldproblems, though, I understand. Rosie and Penn are clearly upper-middle class. They are financially solvent enough to move across the country because they wanted to find a more accepting community for their child (they then chose to lie about it, but, hey, that’s a plot twist). This is not the norm for most people and reviewers skewered this aspect of the story.

While I understand this complaint, I also think that the portrayal of them as upper-middle-class was a plot point as well, showing that even if you do “all the right things” and have a perfect marriage and good jobs, things do not always go as planned. Also, gender identity issues don’t discriminate by social class, so it is just as likely that a real Claude might be born into a rich family as a poor one. This is just the plot vehicle Frankel chose.

While valid, it didn’t bother me as much as it did others.

For me personally, neither of these bothered me as much as the lack of conclusion. Yes, nothing in life gets tied up with a nice pretty bow. I know this. But I wanted more meat to the end, or at least as much as I got in the beginning.

But again, a minor complaint against a great novel.

My Final Thoughts

Can you imagine for one second living your entire life in a body that felt like it was betraying you? Can you wrap your head around the staggering statistic that almost 40% of transgender persons living in the United States attempt suicide at least once? (2)

I can’t, for either.

Books like this by authors with huge hearts and personal experiences with transgender family members (Frankel’s daughter is transgender and the inspiration for the story–though it is not biographical) are imperative for humans, all humans, to read because they aren’t about an agenda or a “side.” They’re about humanity. Frankel isn’t preaching or pushing in this novel, she’s showing you the struggle from the inside out so that you can see and feel that it’s not just a “choice” that you can pray away or send to a camp to fix.

In fact, the most heartbreaking scene in the entire book focuses on Claude’s family portraits and how, the longer he’s forced to be a “boy” to fit in, the smaller and smaller he draws himself on the page until ultimately he disappears. Can you even imagine?

There is so much rhetoric around transgender children and adults and which bathroom they should use and whether or not they should play sports and on what team. Everyone has an opinion. But this book takes all of that and renders it moot. Claude isn’t trying to beat your kid in swimming. And Penn and Rosie aren’t trying to force their agenda on you.

They’re just trying to love their kid and keep him alive and happy.

And isn’t that what we all do? Isn’t that what every child deserves?

I ask you to read this with an open mind, no matter where you fall on this issue. I ask you to place yourself in Penn or Rosie’s place and feel their confusion, doubt, and uncertainty. But most of all, feel their love for their child. That love transcends a child’s normalcy or differences. It transcends whether he is a football captain or a high school drop-out. Why is the high school quarterback more worthy of being himself than a child who identifies as a girl?

The answer, of course, is that he’s not. We’re all worthy of love. And maybe if we put down our “rights and wrongs” and just love one another, this world would be a bit more beautiful place.

Overall Rating (the Meaghan Scale): 4 out of 5 stars

Sharing is Caring

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Stumbleupon

Yummly