Böcker av Claire Lombardo

'Lombardo's impressive debut is a gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory. She juggles a huge cast of characters with seeming effortlessness, bringing each to life with humour, vividness and acute psychological insight.' Madeline Miller, author of Circe and the Women's-Prize-winning The Song of Achilles

The new novel from the author of the Women's Prize longlisted The Most Fun We Ever Had 'Witty and insightful. A powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self' Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

'Witty and insightful. A powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self' BONNIE GARMUS, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY''It was such a pleasure to bury myself in this book, a literary novel of family life which moved and surprised me. You read on ravenously' CLARE CHAMBERS, author of SMALL PLEASURESThe author of THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD returns with a brilliantly observed family drama, in which a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present At fifty-seven, Julia Ames has found herself with an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination towards self-sabotage, she has a husband she loves, two happy children and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs.But, out of the blue, things begin to change.Her always well-behaved son, Ben, is acting strangely, and will soon make a shocking announcement.Her beloved but belligerent teenage daughter is about to depart for college, leaving Julia unexpectedly terrified of an empty nest.And, in the local grocery store, Julia encounters a woman she hasn't seen for 20 years - a woman whose friendship was once both her lifeline and, very nearly, her downfall.Consumed with her checkered past and the chaos of her present, Julia starts to spin out of control, at risk of destroying all she most loves.Following Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months, bookended by a birthday party and a wedding, and examining the fifty-plus years before, Same as It Ever Was examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to make - and to not break - a family.PRAISE FOR CLAIRE LOMBARDO: 'A literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler' GUARDIAN'Lombardo juggles a huge cast of characters with seeming effortlessness, bringing each to life with humour, vividness and acute psychological insight' MADELINE MILLER, author of SONG OF ACHILLES'Lombardo has a wry, often spiky humour and tightly written style that should appeal to fans of Maria Semple, Emma Straub and Jennifer Egan' SUNDAY TIMES

The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo’s debut was dubbed “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler” (The Guardian) and hailed as “ambitious and brilliantly written” (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up—another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng—Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.