Small World by Laura Zigman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Isn’t everyone’s true purpose to love and be loved? To be in service to and to take care of those who need us most?”
This is a story about two sisters, Joyce and Lydia, who are both going through a divorce and Lydia has moved back from California (where she’s been for a long time) into Joyce’s apartment in Boston. The sisters are living together for the first time since they were kids.
“Do you have a sister, Erin?” She shakes her head. “My point exactly. This is what sisters do. We mess with each other, make each other jealous, punish each other for reasons we don’t even understand.”
The book goes back and forth between the present moment and their experiences growing up where they had a third sister who was disabled and died at the age of ten. Their sister took up all of their mom’s energy the book covers a lot of the impact this had on each of the women (kids.)
“I’ll never forget how he pointed out a ketchup stain on that T-shirt instead of sounding out the letters.” I tell him how Lydia had dyslexia and I had a stutter, but he didn’t make us read the word. “He wasn’t like anyone we’d ever met. He let us be ourselves. And he included us in everything that week.”
Zigman always seems to add a bit of quirkiness into her books and there’s some here, too, but this book is also tender and raw and doesn’t shy away from tough, complex situations of how hard it can be to grow up and complicated family dynamics. It’s a deep and touching story of love, loss, and grief.
with gratitude to edelweiss and Ecco/HarperCollins for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
Leave a Reply