Claire Lombardo debuts with 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.
Violet, the eldest daughter, has her life in perfect order after leaving a successful law career to raise her two small sons. Second-born Wendy, widowed young and drowning her pain in booze, weed and younger men, upsets the apple cart when she reconnects with Violet's teenage son, Jonah, the product of a secret teen pregnancy that ended in a closed adoption. Middle child Liza is pregnant and dreads caring for both a baby and her chronically depressed partner at the same time. Youngest daughter Grace accidentally gave the family the impression she got into law school when she's actually working a dead-end job and unsure how to dig herself out of the lie. 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. However, she does not limit this decades-spanning story to cerebral observations but shows the mess humans make of love through infidelity both physical and emotional, unfair judgments and the fear of sharing oneself.
While at times the Sorenson clan falls prey to bemoaning first-world problems, at heart they desire the same closeness and support any human being needs, ultimately waiting for them right where it always was--at home. 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
Shelf Talker: In this ambitious debut novel, four adult sisters and their famously in-love parents unravel decades of family history when a secret from the past resurfaces.