In her debut, Claire Lombardo offers a sprawling drama that explores the maelstrom of love, resentment and tension of the nuclear family and the ways in which a shared history can affect the future for years.
When Marilyn Sorenson, exhausted by raising two babies nine months apart in age, gives a patently untrue reply to a question about motherhood, it instantly becomes one more inside joke she shares with her husband, David. "They would repeat it for years to come in times of strife: the most fun I've ever had." The joke follows the Sorensons from 1980 to 2016, the year in which their four adult daughters wreak havoc on their peace of mind in a whirlwind of existential crises, relationship drama and long-buried secrets. As fissures in the family open, close and shift, David and Marilyn look back on their legendary marriage and the joy and heartache inherent in loving the same person for decades.
Lombardo has a deft hand with metaphor, pulling off the inclusion of a literal family tree--a venerable but diseased gingko--with neither camp nor irony. She also has a knack for encapsulating universal relationship truths in single clear-eyed sentences, as when she describes the situation of "one party consumed with worry so the other could sleep through the night" as a life-saving aspect of marriage.
Covering 40 years of Sorenson family strengths and foibles, The Most Fun We Ever Had is a classy but juicy read that always has one more surprise up its sleeve. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads