Same As It Ever Was

In the present, Julia and her husband Mark are about to be empty nesters: their daughter, Alma, is a high school senior with college on the horizon, and their son Ben is about to be married to Sunny, who is pregnant. These huge changes, and a chance encounter with an old friend, knock Julia off her hard-won equilibrium, and she struggles through the big events - even more so when Ben asks about inviting Julia's mom Anita to the wedding.

*Spoilers*

Two explosive events lurk in Julia's past: first, when she was seventeen, she had a relationship with one of her mother's boyfriends, who was twice her age; after Anita found out, Julia gave up her scholarship at Northwestern and decided to go to Kansas instead in order to put more distance show more between them. Second, when she was a mother herself to three-year-old Ben, and pretty clearly suffering from untreated postpartum depression (and also avoidant attachment, due to Anita's parenting and discovering that her father had another family, and died when she was 11, which Anita kept from her for years), she becomes friends with Helen Russo, a retired lawyer with a lovely house, husband, and five grown boys. Helen and Julia form a fast friendship, which Julia is forced to give up when she has an affair with one of Helen's sons.

Julia is such a deeply realized character that her life is frequently uncomfortable to read about; other than Helen and Mark she seems to have no real friends or social safety net (she has never really liked Mark's two best friends, Brady and Francine). She loves Ben and Alma, but struggles socially and emotionally, which can be traced to a complete absence of positive, caring adult role models in her own childhood.

From Kirkus Reviews: "As Julia approaches 60, she clarifies her identity as mother, wife, and daughter in this novel of domestic ambivalence. As well as a meditation on good and bad mothering, this is a novel about "marriage in the aftermath of an affair.""

Quotes

...that old worry, so familiar to her, that you haven't meant to someone as much as they meant to you... (5)

You were supposed to want everything for your kid and the dregs for yourself. (49)

There has always been a schism, for her, between what she wants to do as a mother and what she actually does; she has never quite trusted her instincts, never quite been able to venture into territory that feels too soft or too tender. (55)

Mark likes others easily and Julia barely at all. (82)

It was, she supposed, easier to have compassion for someone else's mom than it was to have it for your own. (175)

Something that has always astounded her, particularly since her children were born, is how truly, consistently bad the universe is at time management; instead of meting out crises at manageable intervals it seems to deposit them in erratically spaced piles, like the salt trucks in the winter, each pile containing a rainbow of miscellaneous emergencies. (181)

"Things usually do work out, Ollie. They're almost never as huge as we think they're going to be." (Julia to Alma, about college, 257)

...she isn't a bad person, just occasionally bad at being a person. (279)

...her trying might not look like other people's trying but it is nevertheless trying. (280)

Her daughter is piecing together her own interior rule book; this seems as marvelous a development as her learning how to crawl. (320)

Nothing scared her more than seeing people who knew exactly what they wanted from life and knew how to go about getting it. (354)

...you could only count on people to stick around for so long when you didn't give them much to work with, and she simply didn't have much to give; she felt like she'd been deprived of some critical lessons in socialization right out of the gate, and trying to make friends when you'd skipped those lessons, was like learning a new language relying solely on a handful of reticent subjects who'd already decided you were never going to be fluent. (408)

...her mother seemed to think, as she'd maintained all along, that Julia was undeserving of her indignation, her hurt, her confusion, and so she simply refused to acknowledge them, starving them into nonexistence... (425)

She has always vacillated between feelings things too deeply and not feeling them at all... (447) show less

The Short of It:

One of the most frustratingly, endearing reads I’ve ever read.

The Rest of It:

Let me explain that sentence above. Julia Ames walks us through her life as a married mother of two. She includes it all, the doubts, the flaws, the insecurities. We meet her as a young woman, and then a married woman and then a mom. We are taken back and forth in time to when it was good, and when it wasn’t great. And how a brief slip of common sense sends her down a disastrous path. But does it?

It took me a really long time to read Same as it Ever Was. The back and forth nature of the storytelling is necessary but also a bit exhausting. Julia is a frustrating character. She second-guesses too much. There is a lot of internal dialogue as show more she navigates life and basically, everyday interactions. Sometimes I wanted to shake her and tell her to be more confident but then other times, you just want to give her a hug because she is the definition of a hot mess.

Julia is deeply flawed but also relatable. Her flashbacks of raising her children reminded me of my own experiences raising tiny humans. The overall not-knowing if what you are doing is right, or if you could be doing it better. Her relationship with her husband Mark, is tenuous at best. So there’s not a lot of encouragement going on there.

What is the story about? LIFE. It’s about leaving your single self to become part of something larger. It’s about all the missteps you take as you figure out the kind of life you want to live. It’s about mistakes, forgiveness, and the people who come into your life to help you navigate the ups and downs.

Lombardo’s writing is clear and authentic. Genuine, you could say. As I was reading, there were a million moments where I caught myself saying, “I get it.” Especially the sections about Julia’s adult children and their evolution from sweet toddlerhood to moody teens. It all made me a little sad though, that empty nest thing and the “what’s next?” aspect of life. Life is a series of next steps and this story is entirely that.

As you get towards the end of the story, there is a lot going on, so many feelings as Julia figures out how to interact with her very difficult mother, I mean, who can’t relate to that? But the awkwardness and sarcasm hits you before the sense of loneliness and loss does. This section felt a little long. Perhaps, because it was uncomfortable.

This is not a story you will love. It’s not that kind of story but it’s a story you will appreciate, no matter what stage of life you are currently in.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter. show less

I didn't like this quite as much as The Most Fun We Eve Had, but still grew to become invested in the main character Julia. This is also a sweeping family sage as The Most Fun was but told completely from the perspective of Julia. In chapters that alternate between the past and the present or near past, we learn why Julia has trouble relating in a "normal" way to other people and all her insecurities. Lombardo dives deep into the psyche of her characters in a way that really makes them come alive. I didn't like it quire as well as the last book as I thought it dragged in places and I found the ending rather abrupt.

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo is a highly recommended literary, character-driven domestic drama.

Julia Ames, 57, is married to Mark, 60, and the two have a son Ben, 24, who is about to get married and become a father, and a daughter, Alma, with an attitude who is graduating from high school. While shopping for Mark's 60th birthday celebration, she runs into Helen Russo, an older woman she hoped to never encounter again. Twenty years ago Helen met Julia and Ben (3 at that point) at the botanic garden. Helen took Julia, who was floundering, crying frequently, and socially inept at the time under her care almost like a surrogate mother. This encounter lead to Julia reexamining her past actions and why the friendship ended show more abruptly.

While the writing is excellent, detailed, and can even be humorous, the plot is slow moving. The narrative alternates between current events and events from years ago, including meeting Helen and even earlier to Julia's childhood. The alternating time lines document Julia's emotional turbulence and her self-sabotaging behavior while trying to be a wife and mother. It does accomplish the task of examining Julia's current life, her relationship with her children, and the friendship she developed with Helen, along with reasons for the end of the friendship, years ago.

All of the characters are portrayed as fully realized, realistic individuals. Julia is a deeply flawed, complicated character. As she struggles to show affection and seems bent on self destruction, Julia is not necessarily always a sympathetic character. At other times information is revealed that makes her an overwhelmingly a sympathetic character. Thanks to Knopf Doubleday for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
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I was really disappointed. I gave it 4 stars because it was very readable, akin to healthy junk food. Why? I didn't find any of the characters relatable or believable - a little too good to be true considering the challenges with which they were presented.

After reading Clare Lombardo's debut novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had (5 stars for me), I couldn't wait to read her second novel. I've been reading this book for a long time, a chapter or two at a time and finally finished it today. The last 50 or so pages were excellent and made me glad that I stuck with the book. I probably should have just read it through but it was so difficult to like the main character, Julia Ames, it was just easier to read small snippets.

Novel about motherhood and relationships that loses any semblance plot pretty quickly in favor of character development.