Real Life and Liars

Parenting doesn’t end when your children graduate from high school and leave the house. Mira knows this from experience. She is a middle-aged college professor and mother of three grown children. Her oldest, Katya, is by all appearances a successful wife, mother, and business woman, but something is off in her “perfect world.” Ivan, her only son and middle child, is a struggling song-writer who is unhappy with job as a teacher and unlucky in love. Irina, her youngest daughter, has come home after a quick and unconventional marriage. The lives of all three children are coming to a head when they arrive together at their childhood home to celebrate their parents’ 35 wedding anniversary. As if their lives aren’t complicated show more enough, Mira has shocking news of her own and the children are not going to like the decisions she’s making as a result.

Mira lives in Cheboygan, Michigan, which is near the top of the mitten. It tickled me to death to read that. I don’t read a lot of fiction set in Michigan. Unlike California, Paris, London, or New York, it’s not the most common fictional setting. The last novel I remember reading set in Michigan was Middlesex, which I read in 2007. It’s been a while. I know what Michigan lakeside towns are like and I could picture myself there very clearly. For me, there’s just something special about reading about home, even if it’s not my hometown.

What I loved the most about this novel were the little touches that say so much about the characters. Mira had an obsession with Russia, so she named all of her children with Russian names, an interesting contrast with their Polish last name. The scenes that show how battles over clothing shift from the daughter’s choices to the mother’s choices over time also stand out to me. This novel made me reflect on how your children are going to live their own lives. Mira and her husband raised their children with the values that they felt were important. Instead of embracing those values, they sparked battles during childhood and even embarrassment at times in adulthood. No matter how hard you try to do what you feel is right, your children will have different ideas.

My best friend gave this novel to me for my birthday last year and it was the perfect touch. It is a little taste of home written by an author who grew up in my own backyard. More than that, it was an interesting story that kept me reading intently. It is a substantive novel about the lives women as they age. Real Life & Liars is Kristine Riggle’s first novel and I look forward to following her career as she grows as a writer. show less

Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle begins with that famous Tolstoy observation on happy versus unhappy families and offers up the Zielinski family as an example. Mirabelle, the Zielinski matriarch, hides a secret threatening to spill onto the 35th anniversary party her children have planned for her. Her oldest daughter, Kat, has planned the festivity to precision, a mirror of Kat’s yuppie-perfect life. Youngest daughter, Irina, is in the middle of an existential crisis as her hard-living youthful days are coming to an abrupt end. And Ivan, the only son, lumbers to find a way out of his self-sabotaging behavior. Old friends will pop in and out of the tale and the patriarch of the Zielinski clan will march his background noise around show more the rest of these dynamic characters.

Taking place over the spam of a long weekend, Real Life & Liars unfolds through alternating viewpoint chapters of Mirabelle and her three children. I was a bit disappointed that the father, a writer, didn’t get a voice and wondered why Riggle had delegated him to such a lowly position. However, the four protagonists do a fine job painting a distinct family facing the toughest of life’s scenarios. The characters reveal that wonderful mix of comfort and pull-your-hair-out emotions one can only share as part of a family. The northern Michigan setting adds a sweeping feel to the building drama, strengthened further by a looming tornado. With this good mix of characters, setting and drama, Riggle has all the pieces in place for an enjoyable read.

My copy of Real Life & Liars included a reading group guide, but it missed the most pressing question: Are the Zielinski’s unhappy or are they just normal? And that, to me, was a central theme sent in motion by Riggle and her Anna Karenina epigraph.

Real Life & Liars drops in June, just in time for a good beach read or book club addition.

Review first published on Many A Quaint & Curious Volume show less

I really enjoyed reading this book, and then talking about it at our book club meeting.The strength of this book was in the characters. Each one had an aspect I identified with. Each also had something about them that made me want to slap them upside the head. Some were closer to one part of this than the other. They were all wonderfully complicated.Mirabelle is the hippy mom that tried very hard to impart her values (forcing non-conformity!) on her oldest child, but relaxed some when it came to her youngest. Now her children are grown, and she's facing a very personal challenge. She wants to handle it on her own terms, but realizes this won't go over well with her family.Katya has gone the other way with her kids, letting them have show more everything they want. As they become teens, she's realizing that maybe this wasn't the best path. Her husband has secrets, and she's afraid she knows what they are.Ivan is a wannabe songwriter with a fantastic (female) best friend and a very complicated love life. Irina is the youngest. She's having a hard time being a grownup, and has made some bad decisions along the way. Now she's pregnant and realizing that she'd better grow up quickly, and isn't sure she's up for the challenge.Even more than the individual characters, I enjoyed their relationships with each other. One character says that whenever she gets together with one of her siblings, the other sibling is the preferred topic of conversation. She assumes that when they talk, she comes up in the conversation. They rarely agree with one another, but when Irina was in trouble, she turned to big brother Ivan.As the family meets up for what she be a celebratory occasion, they all have their own crises to deal with. I thought the interactions led to great book. show less

The lies in this book are the lies the main characters, a woman in her mid-sixties and her three children, tell themselves, portray to the world, and tell others. All the lies come to a head when Mira, the main character, and her husband celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary just 10 days after Mira discovers that she has breast cancer. Mira announced to her husband that she plans not to undergo surgery or chemotherapy. She then begins to live a lie when she does not inform her children of her cancer. As the family members assemble for the anniversary party in this small town in the Great Lakes, I began to believe that they are all terribly unhappy and deceiving themselves and others. This is truly a dysfunctional family and ready to show more fall apart. However, as a tornado traps them all together inside the family home, they started to let go of their lies. I saw that each character had a long list of flaws but also an inner core of strength.

Real Life & Liars takes time to ruminate on a concern of most mothers of adult children. Mira is in her mid-sixties and raised three children who she nurtured and laid plans for but they went ahead and did as they wished. Was it worth all that struggle and sacrifice? She is tempted to just let go and let the cancer take her life.

The author, Kristina Riggle, does a great job of describing the town of Charlevoix, Michigan near the Great Lakes. Her vivid description of the character’s thoughts, actions, and experiences made me both frustrated and sympathetic with each character. show less

Dysfunctional family comes together for their parents' 35th wedding anniversary: Mom has breast cancer but only hubby knows; elder daughter is married with 3 kids and spends most of her time rejecting Mom's (hippie) ways and buying the suburban lifestyle; middle child is a high school music teacher, Ivan, a failed song-writer and general loser and much younger and pregnant daughter Irina is fresh from a quickie wedding in Vegas to a man almost twice her age. None of these people is particularly likable, which makes for interesting reading. Of course everything came together at the end, so I only gave it 3 stars.

I enjoy reading books about family dynamics. Each family member has his/her own role that allows the family to function. In Real Life and Liars, Ms. Riggle explores the depth of family relationships.

The story is told by the four main characters in alternating chapters. There’s Mirabelle, the hippie, nonconformist mother; Katya, the oldest, materialistic daughter; Ivan, the insecure, middle son; and Irina, the youngest daughter without a sense of direction. The children come home for a weekend visit to celebrate their parents’ wedding anniversary. As each child arrives, with his and her personal problems, Mira is also keeping a secret of her own. She’s made her decision about her fate, and now she hopes her family can accept it.

Ms. show more Riggle did a fantastic job of writing each character and allowing him/her to have his/her own voice. Only Mira’s point of view is written in first person and I thought that only added to the richness of the story. Readers will feel compassion for this family when Mira finally shares her secret with her children.

Real Life and Liars is an honest look into what makes a family a family. The Zielinskis are far from perfect. They may not see eye to eye on things, however when it’s time to come together, they show up ready to support each other. I liked the uniqueness of each child and how he/she played a significant part to the family dynamic. As I read each scene, I could vividly picture each character in my mind and thought this would make a great movie.

Real Life and Liars is Ms. Riggle’s debut novel which I highly recommend. The next time you’re at a book store or your local library, pick it up. You won’t be disappointed…it’s that good! show less

So I initially wanted to read this novel because it had my name in it! It was slow to start with, but as the "party" progresses, it starts to pick up, and secrets get revealed. A good book for a lazy day.