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Loading... We Are Not Ourselves: A Novel (original 2014; edition 2014)by Matthew Thomas
Work InformationWe are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (2014)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I don't often give books a four-star rating unless they are really good. This one is. it is a quiet story, one that goes along, pulling you in and asking some big questions about who we are, and what makes us so, but does it in a subtle way. I am an admitted libramaniac, no sooner finishing one book than scanning my lists for the next one. Not that I am just after the conquest, I often will ponder a book in the process of reading it. It's just that there are so many to be read! And just not enough time. Well, it's the next day, and I am still thinking about this one. I have seen other reviews that said it was slow, or that it didn't keep them interested. I was the opposite. I kept reading the next chapter after I should have stopped for the evening because I just wanted it to keep on. Even after it ended, I wanted to know what was going to happen to the characters. Not wanting to give anything away, but towards the end, there is a letter from one character to another that should be read, if nothing else in the book is read. But then, if you hadn't read the rest of the book, it wouldn't mean nearly so much. I only wish that I had received a letter like that one. Oh, Eileen Leary wants the American Dream in a bad way. And to her, it's all embodied by the house for which she is willing to sacrifice almost everything. And, because she is able to keep the house, we are supposed to think that she did okay, our Eileen. I understand that the house is supposed to be representative, but it seemed most of the time to represent materialism. I love a family saga but this one left me a bit flat. It's a very, very LONG story (672 pages), about a family struggling with Alzheimer’s disease...and how a husband, wife and son struggle to cope with the overwhelming challenges they face and with a heartbreaking illness that grinds to its inevitable finish. By the time she meets Ed Leary, Eileen Tumulty has already decided what she wants out of life and that is to escape from the Woodside, Queens neighborhood where she grew up. We see her jump out of the skillet and into the fire so many times that it becomes almost unbearable for the reader. As the daughter of hard-working, but hard-drinking Irish parents in a loveless marriage, Eileen spent most of her childhood propping up her mother and running the household. Once married, Eileen’s dreams of an elegant home seem within reach. She is a successful nurse. Ed is a brilliant research scientist and she can already envision where his career path will take them. A baby boy, Connell, completes the picture. What Eileen doesn’t foresee is Ed’s stubborn resistance to change. He’s happy where he is, first as a tireless and hyper-focused researcher and then as a professor at a community college. The Eileen's family life is a story in itself...filled with complicated family dynamics and marital conflicts, then when Ed is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the Leary family changes into something very much 'something else". Once again, the burden falls on Eileen to step up and make key family decisions, including the most important one, how long to keep Ed at home. I didn't especially like the characters of Eileen or Connell. They seemed to be both undeveloped and unfeeling. Then there were the scenes in the nursing home that were moving and sometimes heartbreaking...giving the reader insight into the meaning of Ed’s increasingly limited ability to put his thoughts into understandable meanings to his words. I think the strongest and the most beautiful part of the book is Ed’s letter to Connell. While a reminder that there are no guarantees in life is nothing new...Ed has the best advice for his son: "What matters most right now is that you hear how much I want you to live your life and enjoy it. I don’t want you to be held back by what’s happened to me."
This is a book in which a hundred fast-moving pages feel like a lifetime and everything looks different in retrospect. As in the real world, the reader’s point of view must change as often as those of the characters...This is one of the frankest novels ever written about love between a caregiver and a person with a degenerative disease. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed. Eileen can't help but dream of a calmer life, in a better neighborhood. When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she's found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn't aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream. Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future. Through the Learys, novelist Matthew Thomas charts the story of the American Century, particularly the promise of domestic bliss and economic prosperity that captured hearts and minds after WWII. The result is a powerfully affecting work of art; one that reminds us that life is more than a tally of victories and defeats, that we live to love and be loved, and that we should tell each other so before the moment slips away. Epic in scope, heroic in character, masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves is a testament to our greatest desires and our greatest frailties."-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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If I was in my 20s or 30s I don't think I would have liked this book much. Not enough perspective (just speaking for myself). The book is character driven and if someone really is into plot, this isn't your book. I will reread this book in a few years and see what else it has to say. ( )