The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Two college students meet in the 1970’s, marry, and have four daughters. Marilyn and David seem very much in love, especially to their daughters, who feel they can never quite live up to the success of their parents’ relationship. Lombardo narrates the more complicated story of this couple – and of their daughters, all of whom have secrets. She does so through a series of flashbacks, flipping between the decades of the late 20th to 21st century, from the early years of Marilyn and David’s marriage, when having several babies close together is quite overwhelming; to the teenage troubles of rebellious Wendy, and the apparently more conventional Violet; to Liza, the successful young college professor whose life is not as in control as it looks; and the failure-to-launch tale of the youngest daughter, Grace. This is a sticky, emotion-laden story. All characters seem caught in the web of family relations, whether with their parents or their husbands, boyfriends, and children. It did keep me reading – but there were sections I skimmed, when the characters seemed twisted pretzel-like around their own sense of shame, resentment, and confusion. The fifteen-year old Jonah, given up for adoption by one of the daughters, is a pivotal center of the novel, as is the gingko tree at David and Marilyn’s house – a place of coming together, refuge, and catastrophe. By the end of the novel the story has reached a place of greater calm, but the path to it is turbulent.



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