2022 Book Review #4:Count The Ways

 

Another fantastic story by one of my fave authors.  I've read 3 of her other novels (Under the Influence, After Her, Labor Day)  This is my favorite so far.

STORY SUMMARY 

Eleanor is an artist and a writer. and an only child of parents who were killed in a crash when she was just 16 years old.  She heads to New Hampshire to buy a farm and settle there when she's just 20 years old.  She meets Cam, another artist whose specialty is wooden bowls,  at a craft fair in Vermont and they fall in love and get married. Within 4 years, they are the parents of 3 children (Alison, Ursula, and Toby).  Toby fills his pockets with rocks, talks to God and plays the violin. Ursula is the happy child who is also the peacemaker of the family.  And Alison is the moody one.....often distant who doesn't really like the things girls typically enjoy. 

Life on their New Hampshire farm provides Eleanor with everything she's always wanted....a family...summer nights watching Cam's softball games, snow days sitting around the fire place making hot chocolate and creating crafts, the annual tradition of making paper boats and people out of old wine corks to float down the nearby river when spring arrives.  The years go by and although Cam and Eleanor aren't as physically intimate as they used to be, it doesn't really matter.  They have something far more important.  Their family. 

Then one day a terrible accident occurs.   It's caused by Cam's negligence  and Eleanor, who is unable to forgive him, becomes consumed with bitterness.  She begins to lose herself in her role as a mother and Cam finds himself a new, young lover.  Life as they know it, changes. 

Over the next couple of decades, all five members of the family and many of the friends that are close with them, make discoveries about themselves and each other. Sometimes their decisions bring them together....while other times they tear them apart. 

What happens to the farm?  Will they ever reunite and accept one another for who they really are?

MY THOUGHTS

This novel begins before the Roe vs Wade was ever a law, before the Watergate scandal.  We see glimpes of the Vietnam War and the culture of the 1970s.  We see the beginning of the computer age, the Challenger explosion, the onset of the AIDS epidemic and the early stages of the #MeToo movement......through the gender transition of one child and another child's choice to completely break away from the mother.  This book's characters are forced to confront the pain and heartache, loss and essential truths of their past.....and they will find redemption in their darkest hours. 

The character development is spot on!  I always love the way this author creates characters whom you want to know.  I wanted to be a visitor on their farm.  I wanted to have tea with Eleanor in her Brookline, MA apartment and play in the pond with the children.  The depictions of the farm are perfect for setting a story in small town NH. 

There are so many good themes in this novel.  The mother-child relationship.  The mother-daughter relationship; the mother-son relationship, and the husband-wife relationship. Her exploration of gender transition is a good undertaking especially because  this book is set in the 1980s before gender identity issues was openly talked about. I applaud the author for the excellent way she wrote about Alison/Al.

There are themes of friendship, betrayal, adultery, forgiveness, unexpected loss, abortion, date rape, and domestic violence. There is the issue of brain injury and co-parenting. (some of these issues are with minor characters that become major characters). There  are bittersweet moments and hurrah moments.  There is the truth that with great sorrow comes great joy. 

There were several quotes that jumped out at me.  My favorites were:

"Sometimes a person has to leave home to become who they need to be". (pg 14 Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard c.2021)

"Hard things will happen.....they always do.  It's called life." (pg 151) 

"The thing you love isn't the person's brain...it's the person" (pg 203) 

"Children had to know pain, or how would they every know what to do when they encountered it? Troubles would come, no matter what. The best you could do was to raise your children in such a way that when trouble found them....as it would....they'd be able to survive it."  (pg 439)

"The worst things, the ones that actually got you, were almost never the ones you spent your time worrying about." (pg 439)

The ending?  exquisite.  And unexpected.  

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to some mature content and language).

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 10.