I received an Advance Listening Copy of this book thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher. All opinions are my own.
My reading of this book suffered slightly by the fact that it took me so long to finish it. This is not at all the fault of the book but simply that I didn’t have enough time to devote to listening to an audiobook over the summer so I had to read it in bits and pieces until school started up again.
The Fisher family has gathered for a week’s holiday in a rented home. At the beginning of the week, they celebrate the youngest addition to the family, baby Dolly, and at the end of the week they will celebrate their matriarch’s 70th birthday. But the complications of family dynamics and hidden tensions will bubble to the surface far before the week is up.
Vivian and Patrick are the parents of three grown daughters. Alex, the type A eldest, reeling from the unexpected addition of Dolly at the age of 45, with her husband Luc and their children Eden and Rosa. Nancy, the middle child, still seen as the family screw-up even as a successful doctor. Divorced and desperately missing her daughter, whose father won’t switch weeks to let her join the weeklong celebration. Eva, the youngest and most financially successful, a single mom of a teenaged daughter, and who has brought her boyfriend, who has brought his obnoxious son.
At the beginning of the week together, while taking family pictures, a split second reaction to a falling tree reveals that Patrick might have a favourite among his three daughters. All three sisters are left reeling by this revelation, hurt and confused. At the same time, they are seeing fractures in what they always thought was their parents’ perfect marriage, and Vivian’s scattered memory may be more serious than they are willing to admit.
The sisters are close and have seen each other through hard times, but they are also keeping secrets from each other. I thought the sibling relationship was really where Littlewood’s writing shone. There was a realism and honesty to it that, over and over again, I found myself nodding along with. I don’t have a sister and I don’t have any aunts so I actually don’t have much close-up experience with sisters, aside from the fact that I’m now raising a couple of them. So while I could relate to some of the sibling dynamics, I also noticed the parts where this was a uniquely sister relationship. There is both a constant closeness and a consistent rivalry between these sisters. There is also the painful familiarity of how even the best and most adult of us can revert to our childhood selves when with our families of origin. There’s a fantastic scene where two of the sisters get into what evolves into a physical fight and one leans forward and bites the other. (And this fits with my theory that if there’s going to be a biter in the family, it’s going to be the youngest.)
I’m not sure if it was because it took me so long to get through the first two-thirds of the story, but it did feel like the novel unfolded slowly and then everything amped up all at once. All the drama and secrets seems to come to a head in one evening (backgrounded by an epic storm) and it felt a little too tidy. At the same time, it was satisfyingly dramatic so I guess I’m not really complaining. The denouement after that climax then felt a bit too drawn out. (And this time I was listening to it all on the same day.)
If you have siblings, I think you will find a lot to laugh and/or cringe at here and I’ll be keeping an eye out for more from Littlewood.
Karissa Reads Books 
I LOL’d at the idea of the youngest being a biter. I was the youngest, although I have two older brothers, and although I don’t think I bit them (that I recall) my parents do remind of when I used to sit on top of one of them and scream that they were hurting me.
I like the sounds of this book, but I can’t listen to fiction on audio, only non-fiction!
Anne, I also laughed at the biting comment. I’m the youngest but never bit, possibly because I never wanted things I couldn’t confirm were sanitary in my mouth. Yuck!
Karissa, I think reviewing books like this is hard because the plot is so familiar, but if an author can bring unique characterization to it, I’m happy to read another family drama. For instance, when I recently reviewed the book Feeding Ghosts, I realized it sounds like every book ever written by a Chinese-American child of immigrants. But it definitely felt different. That was a tough review to write!
Maybe just in my family then?? I remember when my youngest niece went through a biting phase and her parents (both firstborns) were at such a loss and I was just, like, when you’re little, sometimes you have to bite!
I think it is hard to add much of a new element to what is primarily a family drama like this. The idea of how it might affect everyone if one parent seemed to blatantly favour one child adds something new but you’re right, there isn’t necessarily a lot here that’s new.
I was a definite biter! My theory is that when you’re the youngest and the littlest, you don’t have a lot of options when someone is physically picking on you!
I think it would be just as good in hard copy form!
I canNOT picture you biting anyone 🤣
I don’t bite people NOW!
This is reminding me that we have a very sweet looking picture of me sitting in a park with Rose. Peter didn’t realize that I had pulled her aside because she had just bit me as hard as she could on my leg above my knee! I had tooth marks for days after!
That is so wild to me. We’ve never had a biter in my family–cousins, nieces, nephews, nothing. But I do know there is always one biter at school.
Hahaha, now I am feeling weird about this! To be clear, I never bit anybody at school. The only person I have ever bitten is my older brother and that was when I was very young. Rose is also not biting people at school. We may be a family of biters (??!) but we keep it in the family!
Ayyyy, everyone needs a tradition 😀
HAHAHAH