Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “We Are Not Ourselves” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

We Are Not Ourselves

Matthew Thomas (Goodreads Author)

3.70 · Rating details · 24,509 ratings · 3,614 reviews

Epic in scope, heroic in character, and masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves is a multigenerational portrait of the Irish American Leary family.

Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has bee ...more

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Hardcover, 620 pages

Published August 19th 2014 by Simon & Schuster

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about We Are Not Ourselves, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Book Group Worthy Titles for 2014

332 books — 1,553 voters

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great 2014 Book Preview II - Fall and Winter

70 books — 192 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

3.70 ·

Rating details

· 24,509 ratings · 3,614 reviews

Filter

Sort order

Aug 13, 2014 Jenna rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-stars, arc, contemporary-fiction, fiction, netgalley, to-review

It was a bit hard for me to rate this review with stars. There were times that I thought that I was going to give it 3 and other times 5 stars, so I've settled in the middle of the two.

Instead of being plot-driven this book seems to be solely character-driven where you get a feel of the families individual idiosyncrasies and if you pay particular attention to detail, you can see how the twists and turns in their lives cause subtle changes in each character as you would in real life. This story i It was a bit hard for me to rate this review with stars. There were times that I thought that I was going to give it 3 and other times 5 stars, so I've settled in the middle of the two.

Instead of being plot-driven this book seems to be solely character-driven where you get a feel of the families individual idiosyncrasies and if you pay particular attention to detail, you can see how the twists and turns in their lives cause subtle changes in each character as you would in real life. This story is best summed up as being centered around one family, mostly following the mother Eileen, and their ups and downs throughout life. Although I would have to say that it was mostly downs than ups.

Eileen wants to live a life of prestige. She not only graduated from high school but received a BS in Nursing as well as a Masters in Nursing Administration. At some point she finally meets a man that she deems worthy enough for her, after giving up the dream that some wealthy man would sweep her off her feet and allow her to live off of his wealth. And when life sets in and things start to move off-track, Eileen chooses to overlook them as if they weren't happening because in her mind her life was going to be projected the way she wanted her life to actually be.

Eileen and her husband, Ed, eventually have a child and name him Connell. Luckily for Connell his dad seems to be great at giving him emotional support. Growing up Eileen's mother was very distant and as a result, Eileen is hard and off-putting almost as though she were narcissistic, but I am not sure that she could be labeled as so. It seemed that her image would shift from indifferent to cruel to passive and then controlling. I couldn't quite figure her out, but I felt sorry for her son because she treated him horribly at times. I think deep down though that she loved him the best way that she knew how.

Because this story is mainly character-driven, it is long and at times slow moving. I think this would be the only reason why I didn't take the plunge and give it five stars. I think as much could have been achieved with developing the characters in the story had it been tightened down to at least 100 less pages, but this is my personal opinion.

The author did an excellent job with making the characters three dimensional because I found myself getting angry and frustrated at the mother when she would act so indifferent to her son or controlling toward her environment and at other times when she was so oblivious and chose to see things not as they really were. At times it was painful to read these parts because as the book progressed I began to loathe her. She reminded me a lot of the mother from the movie/book 'Ordinary People', Beth Jarrett, because she was wound so tight and was so concerned with outside appearances than to open her eyes and look at her life as it really was. At first I thought that the book failed by making the MC so dislikable, but the more I thought about it afterward, I realized that the character of Eileen was so well developed that she pulled some serious emotion from me.

If you are looking for a great character-driven novel then this is definitely the book for you.
...more

flag 125 likes · Like · see review

Feb 10, 2014 Patrick Brown rated it it was amazing

The word I keep coming back to with this book is "honest." No punches pulled here. These characters might let you down, they might not do what you want them to do in every instance, but damn if they don't feel real throughout. Still, the second half of this book is an epic, gut-punch of a page-turner. Highly recommended.

flag 114 likes · Like · see review

Jan 30, 2014 Denise rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2014-reading-challenge, arc, fiction, kindle, favorite-books, knocked-my-socks-off

I wish I was a professional writer or reviewer so I could give this novel the brilliant review it deserves. But, alas, I am just a reader who is still processing and recovering from the last highly emotional pages of it. This is about as perfectly written as a novel can be.

Eileen Tumulty is born to Irish immigrants in Queens, New York. Her childhood was tumultuous, and she was forced to grow up sooner than most girls her age. She knew early on that she wanted more of a life for herself. She tho ...more

flag 97 likes · Like · see review

Sep 07, 2014 Natasha rated it did not like it

Shelves: arc, historical, literary-fiction

Did not finish. Characters were flat and plot mundane. It was just unrelenting misery throughout the story - alcoholism, miscarriages, death, illness, bullying - and that was only the first quarter of the book! I know I am in the minority as most people loved this book - but I needed to see a glimmer of hope (or even a likeable character), and Matthew Thomas failed to deliver it.

flag 69 likes · Like · see review

Aug 31, 2014 Kiersten Gawronski rated it did not like it

As bored with this book as Eileen was with her life. 100 pages in I figured something needed to change, and if it wasn't going to be her, it had to be me.

flag 62 likes · Like · see review

Jul 24, 2017 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels

This is an unblinkingly awful exploration of dementia, that’s what dominates three quarters of this very long novel. It’s a very stately, simple, no-flash account of an Irish American woman who meets a guy and has a son, that’s really it. Eileen is really not the nicest person, husband Ed is kind of strange and hugely dorky and the son Connell is frankly someone I would pay not to spend any time with, and this, of course, is the point. She is a senior nurse craving for upward mobility, he is a p This is an unblinkingly awful exploration of dementia, that’s what dominates three quarters of this very long novel. It’s a very stately, simple, no-flash account of an Irish American woman who meets a guy and has a son, that’s really it. Eileen is really not the nicest person, husband Ed is kind of strange and hugely dorky and the son Connell is frankly someone I would pay not to spend any time with, and this, of course, is the point. She is a senior nurse craving for upward mobility, he is a pharmaceutical researcher and college lecturer, you might think that they would be going places but he vetoes every plum job that’s dangled in front of him as he’s in love with the idea of being the chemical Dead Poets Society guy, you know, impressing tender minds with the inviolable truths of Western whatjamacallit.

She wants to get out of the Jackson Heights neighborhood as it’s frankly going down, by which she means that the local skin colour is modulating in a brownish direction. So she surreptitiously buys a large house in Bronxville, which is so much better, meaning the neighbours are pleasantly white and you don’t have to ever talk to them. Meanwhile Connell is just your standard government issue teenage American jerk. When they move is when Ed gets the disastrous disease and from then on it’s all pretty much suffering.

It's very compelling. It’s almost dull to begin with, but that’s okay. Everything, even the later horrors, moves at the same speed, which I think is around 19 miles per hour. It was an antidote to all the kinetic eyeball-wrenching modern movies I have seen recently. There were no jump cuts, no flashbacks, no postmodern party tricks. It was the sweet, sad music of humanity.

**

A REAL LIFE MYSTERY!

When I got this handsome hardback I saw it was previously owned by Queens Library. I get a lot of ex-library books. Then I found the following curious item in between one of the pages :

I can't really believe this relates to THE Trump Family... but could there be another? And if it is one of THEM, why would they be borrowing books from Queens Library? Or maybe the above notelet was given to a Trump family acquaintance who does use Queens Library?

It's a Goodreads mystery. ...more

flag 50 likes · Like · see review

Sep 12, 2014 Carol rated it really liked it

Shelves: debut

How can We Are Not Ourselves be a debut novel? If you had the opportunity to hear Matthew Thomas explain it, it would make sense. Ten years, yes ten years of hard work, tweaking and self- editing before he even tried to sell his manuscript. Ten years. Thomas' diligence paid off in a bidding war for his novel and with glowing early reviews from professionals and readers alike.

It was enlightening to hear Matthew Thomas speak at R.J. Julia's in Madison, CT this past Monday evening. It also makes m How can We Are Not Ourselves be a debut novel? If you had the opportunity to hear Matthew Thomas explain it, it would make sense. Ten years, yes ten years of hard work, tweaking and self- editing before he even tried to sell his manuscript. Ten years. Thomas' diligence paid off in a bidding war for his novel and with glowing early reviews from professionals and readers alike.

It was enlightening to hear Matthew Thomas speak at R.J. Julia's in Madison, CT this past Monday evening. It also makes my thoughts on We Are Not Ourselves harder to express. Not only did I really like We Are Not Ourselves but I liked Matthew also. These two things combined make we want to get this right but unlike Matthew I don't have ten years.

Simply stated We Are Not Ourselves is an impelling saga of a multigenerational Irish family and their life in New York. Would this description alone make you want to read this? We Are Not Ourselves has beautiful language, a well-constructed plot, is atmospheric and has characters with great depth. What makes this one stand out in a crowd of good books and worth your time to commit its 600+ pages? For this reader it was the feelings it evoked. It is like watching ordinary people with ordinary dreams and passions, a window to their soul or self.

Eileen Tumulty, daughter, wife, mother is at the center and the driving force of much of the novel. The author's thoughts on naming her were quite interesting but I leave you to your own conclusions. We meet Eileen as a young girl and it is here, like most of us, that her self is formed. She is the daughter of an alcoholic mother and a father who is like the mayor of the local pub. Early on Eileen becomes fixed in her caretaker role. These things should make Eileen a strong woman with the power to be whatever she wishes yet somehow she becomes a shadow of what?, circumstance?, choices?, leading to her own undoing. She wants, she yearns, she strives, and the quest is always just a bit beyond her reach. She is a sad rendering of a smart woman and it is hard for me to like her. Ed Leary, her husband became my focus. A man who is content to just be. A college professor who truly believes motivating and teaching his students is far more important than position or money. A man with a brilliant mind that is slowly falling apart. Clues are given, the thought of Alzheimer's is there but it is kick in the gut when it is confirmed. Connell, the offspring, their son. The relationship between Connell and his parents bears close attention. The father/son affinity is powerful and doubly sad in consideration of Ed's disease. Watching this sensitive boy dropped in the middle of this nest was painful.

In the end I haven't disclosed much.We Are Not Ourselves is a book that needs to be digested in its own way by each reader. I do feel it is worth your time. Read a few reviews. Consider the subject matter. Enjoy.
...more

flag 43 likes · Like · see review

Aug 27, 2014 Perry rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2touchup

Poignant, Timely Novel

"If I could make days last forever / If words could make wishes come true / I'd save every day like a treasure and then / Again, I would spend them with you."
Croce, Time in a Bottle, 1972

An elegiac novel to a committed wife whose husband suffers early onset Alzheimer's. I found particularly moving her ability to adapt and accept and cope with the loss of her dreams of a husband who's a dashing, successful professor arriving each evening to a beautiful home in the perfect su ...more

flag 42 likes · Like · see review

May 05, 2014 switterbug (Betsey) rated it really liked it

I just finished reading and reviewing a novel about home, identity, and how unexpected human developments/illness can capsize lives, called THE ARSONIST, by Sue Miller. And here are those themes again, but in a much different style, plot, and story. Thomas's debut novel is an epic saga, a tersely executed but moving tale of an Irish-American family, and spans a few generations, from the early 1950s to 2011. The story predominantly focuses on Eileen Tumulty, who is a first generation American, an I just finished reading and reviewing a novel about home, identity, and how unexpected human developments/illness can capsize lives, called THE ARSONIST, by Sue Miller. And here are those themes again, but in a much different style, plot, and story. Thomas's debut novel is an epic saga, a tersely executed but moving tale of an Irish-American family, and spans a few generations, from the early 1950s to 2011. The story predominantly focuses on Eileen Tumulty, who is a first generation American, and opens when she is just a child. However, it is her married adult life that is the heart of the novel.

The story is both broad and specific. Thomas expands his lens to incorporate Eileen's life experiences growing up in New York, her hard-bitten childhood, especially dealing with her mother's alcoholism and her father's more veiled gambling problems. At the same time, we get a sense of each era that we pass through, but just enough to strengthen the story at hand. Too, as neighborhoods change or gentrify, we see how they evolve from what preceded them. The details of different suburbs in New York City make them come alive, both physically, socially, and emotionally--an analogy to how people evolve in families. Each generation leaves its fingerprint on the next one. Eileen, in her quest for self-improvement, and her status-conscious nature, is tenacious in her ambitions to climb the ladder of success, "the ineffable something she'd been chasing."

Eileen loves to entertain, and to take pride in her home. Her husband, Ed Leary, a quirky academic/scientist, cares little for furnishings and material trappings. He cares about his work and his students, and playing baseball with their son, Connell. Ed has no aspirations to attain financial wealth, especially if it means sacrificing his principles and giving way to what he calls the decadence of capitalism and consumerism. It is all about the students to him. He has no interest in being an administrator, dean, or corporate executive, positions that were offered to him but that he turned down. Eileen was frustrated at his complacency; she yearned for Ed to aspire for more, specifically a climb to the top of the food chain.

"She needed him to be her partner, because she loved him terribly...and so she was going to save him from himself...He needed a real home no less than she did. His mind had grown smaller as he'd bunkered himself in his ideals...He needed to regroup, to see new possibilities, to think bigger than ever. If there was anything she could help him with, it was thinking big."

Life throws some curve balls at the Leary family, and what is most vivid about the book is the gravitas of Eileen, Ed, and Connell. Eileen is the polestar of the family, and I deeply felt every twist and turn in her life. There are chapters devoted to her husband and son, but it was mostly though Eileen's eyes that we experienced their lives.

Despite the large page count, the pages move swiftly--it isn't dense and wordy. The prose is lean and assured, and the characterizations were supple and organic. There were a few times that I felt the story editing could go a bit smoother, as far as which events were captured and which were not. Periodically, I felt I had missed something, and realized it was just that some events that happened offstage were referred to only later, and it came out slightly unnatural. There were also a few anachronisms, like "Oh, snap," said by a character in the 1990s. However, these are minor irritants, and although it may have removed me from the novel for a few seconds, it didn't have severe consequences.

I don't want to cover much detail, as the surprises and developments in the story daunted me as if I were one of the Leary family, a sort of free-fall that I felt for them when life handed them lemons. And, although Eileen is a completely different character than Scarlett O'Hara, both Irish-American women possessed a certain degree of self-possession, and, especially, resourcefulness. Both women had threats to the nature of their home and home lives (one in Civil War, the other in the everyday war of life), and yet they both persevered with determination and resolute aim. It took me no less than 75 pages to really engage, but eventually it fully absorbed my attention. ...more

flag 39 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2014 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, netgalley

I may try to come back to this later, but I should note that it has taken me nearly a month to read the first 200 pages of this novel -- when I normally go through 2-3 books a week. Honestly? I think it's very well written, I'm just bored.

flag 39 likes · Like · see review

May 06, 2014 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-book, 2014, fiction

I don't think I'm qualified to declare this book a "Great American Novel," so I'll just call it a Great American Story... one whose quiet power I will long remember.

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

May 29, 2014 Richard rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Richard by: Steve Walker

Shelves: recs-by-friends, american-literature, reviewed, first-reads, 2011-2018

Who'd a thunk it? I won this as a result of entering a Goodreads giveaway. I am a lucky First Reads winner!

Sept. 25/14: And the book has finally arrived! (Although I'm not sure how long it has been waiting in the mailbox...)

This is the story of an Irish American girl from New York named Eileen Tumulty, who, because of her less-than-ideal family situation, is forced to care for her parents and grow up too fast. She falls for an odd but endearing scientist named Ed Leary, and they are soon married ...more

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

Feb 25, 2014 Debbie "DJ" rated it it was ok

Shelves: netgalley, fiction

ARC through NetGalley. Thank you NetGalley!

First I should say this is a very long read. Some parts of this story held my interest, while others left me indifferent. It is often written in the third person, as such, this story is mostly told rather than felt.

It begins in the 1950's childhood of our main character Eileen. Coming from a painful Irish immigrant background, Eileen wants more out of life. If fact, this is the main theme of the story. She is always looking for greener pastures, cares o ...more

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2014 Angela M rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley-reviews

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC
*******************************************************
3.5 if I could give half stars.

There are no perfect people in this book . I liked them one minute and didn't like them the next and then liked them again. That's pretty much how I felt about the book overall because for me it's really a character driven story rather than one that is driven by the plot.

A lot of ground is covered here. The early part of the book is actually my favorite par ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Sep 16, 2015 Julie Christine rated it liked it

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, read-2015

Meticulous and ponderous, Matthew Thomas's debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves spans several decades, from a classic New York Irish immigrant story to the grinding tragedy of dementia and health care in the 21st century United States (at least prior to the Affordable Care Act).

I've just lost a loved one to Alzheimer's and there is tremendous mercy to be realized in the relatively short span of time between diagnosis and death—only a few years and only in the final months was the decline as devast ...more

flag 29 likes · Like · see review

Oct 04, 2014 Kathy rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

The only thing worse than reading 282 pages of this book would have been reading 283 pages of this book. That many pages equates an entire (other) novel I could have been engaged in! It felt as if Thomas was quietly observing very boring lives unfolding in front of him and decided to document it. It's too bad because the first line had me thinking I might be reading a family saga akin to 'Angela's Ashes'. The daughter, Eileen, is brought into the pub where her charismatic Irish father is easily ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2014 Jill rated it really liked it

When a debut book sparks a bidding war on both sides of the Atlantic, the inevitable question is, “Is it worth all the hype?”

The answer, I’m pleased to say, is mostly “yes.”

Oh sure, there are some quibbles. The opening 100 pages – the background information that fleshes out the characters – could be edited down a bit. A very minor character appears in the second half of the book and I had to wade back through pages to remind myself who she was. Another minor character’s part could easily have be ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Mar 21, 2015 Patrick rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

Not all aspects of the novel are entirely satisfactory but the characterisation is strong,and interaction of the characters in this Irish American family is handled very well by the author.The plot is linear and predictable and overall the text could have been condensed.Nonetheless a thoroughly enjoyable read and I award 4 stars

flag 26 likes · Like · see review

Nov 13, 2014 Barbara Backus rated it did not like it

“Polished prose” (The New York Times), “epic of small events” (Los Angeles Times) and “extraordinary portrait of Alzheimer’s disease” (The Guardian). I would have to agree with this last comment about the depiction of Alzheimer’s but not with most of the praise given to this first novel.

I struggled with it, exasperated on almost every page by both the emphasis on too many unnecessary details on one hand with not enough illuminating details on the other. Then, there’s the often cumbersome writi
“Polished prose” (The New York Times), “epic of small events” (Los Angeles Times) and “extraordinary portrait of Alzheimer’s disease” (The Guardian). I would have to agree with this last comment about the depiction of Alzheimer’s but not with most of the praise given to this first novel.

I struggled with it, exasperated on almost every page by both the emphasis on too many unnecessary details on one hand with not enough illuminating details on the other. Then, there’s the often cumbersome writing – the frequency of sentences so chunky and so lengthy that I had to reread them several times. Here’s one example:

“He asked her to get him another napkin, because they kept them behind the counter and it would have required some negotiation on his part to get one, and she felt a surge of connection to him that made all the nights of his holding her settle in, like a dog going to sleep with a sigh by a fireplace, and she wanted to reach out and touch his face, but she knew that she would never be with him, that something about the circumstances of how they’d come together made that impossible, that their lives were too different, too incommensurable, and that while they’d had this thing that she saw meant more to her than she’d understood while it was happening, it too, now, was gone.”

Reviewers have said it took Thomas ten years to write this book. I have to admire his tenacity but find it off-putting that he manages to lose the reader at certain points. The character of Virginia is a good example. It took me a while to remember that she was the woman Eileen met once, thirty years earlier in a store’s dressing room. Now living in her desired upscale neighborhood, Eileen is determined to have Virginia be aware of her improved economic status. So, after their first and only meeting thirty years earlier Eileen drives to Virginia’s house to confront her. Really?

On the positive side, reviewers have hailed the author’s depiction of Alzheimer’s disease. My criticism of this part of the novel is the fact that while Eileen is a highly trained and experienced nurse, she doesn’t recognize the need for her husband to wear a medical alert bracelet, even after he has deteriorated dramatically and she has allowed him to walk to town where he disrupts traffic. It is only when Ed’s disease reaches the ultimate point of disorientation that Eileen finally yields.

I muddled through to the end of the book knowing that my personal opinion is at odds with those of many critics. I think that additional editing might have made me somewhat more satisfied.

...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Jul 12, 2014 Nicole Overmoyer rated it it was ok · review of another edition

WE ARE NOT OURSELVES by Matthew Thomas is a novel that starts off with a bang – the murder of a frog and a father abusing his son for it. Unfortunately, the bang fizzles quickly. The opening scene was something this reader wants to know more about – who the boy and the father are, for example. This reader is disappointed.

Thomas moves swiftly from the frog and the abuse to the small daughter of Irish immigrants to New York City. There is no little boy in sight.

Eileen Tumulty is interesting enough WE ARE NOT OURSELVES by Matthew Thomas is a novel that starts off with a bang – the murder of a frog and a father abusing his son for it. Unfortunately, the bang fizzles quickly. The opening scene was something this reader wants to know more about – who the boy and the father are, for example. This reader is disappointed.

Thomas moves swiftly from the frog and the abuse to the small daughter of Irish immigrants to New York City. There is no little boy in sight.

Eileen Tumulty is interesting enough for a while.

Not for long, but for a while.

She grows from a wide-eyed girl ready to conquer the world to a jaded young woman in a very short span of time. Her father dotes on her and her mother mostly ignores her. There’s a boarder in their house who plays the clarinet and he’s interesting but he disappears almost as fast as the boy and the frog.

As girl children of immigrants, and girl children in general, are wont to do, Eileen marries a man she figures she must love. It’s a very odd sort of love, to be honest. Mostly, Eileen and Ed are ships passing in the night. The night being, of course, when Thomas makes the point again and again that marital relations are just fine in bed.

When they have a son after years of trying and failing, everything starts to crumble.

This seems due in part to Ed’s total disinterest in family and marriage and the constantly evolving racism that grows in Eileen. She is absolutely convinced that she is not racist but anyone who reads this book will see that she is. And she really could do something about it. But she doesn’t.

All this happened in a quarter of the book. I stopped reading when my Kindle told me I was at 25% and I realized I no longer particularly cared what happened to these people.

I’m still a little curious about the boy who murdered the frog, but I’m not that curious.

The blurb that attracted me to this book on NetGalley mentioned the words masterwork, powerfully moving, epic in scope, heroic in character…

I didn’t get those things. I’m sure someone else will.

(I received a copy of WE ARE NOT OURSELVES via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thoughts are my own. This review will be cross-posted on NetGalley, Goodreads, and my blog.) ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2013 Aidan Byrne rated it it was amazing

This is as close to perfect as you're going to get, not just from a debut novel, but from any novel, period. There's such great heart in here. Primarily, the story focuses on Eileen Leary, a tough-as-nails nurse originally from Woodside, Queens, but each member of the family—Big Mike, Eileen's father; Ed, her husband; and Connell, her son—gets his due. You feel irretrievably drawn to all of them, so that every heartbreak, either minor or major, becomes your heartbreak and grips you long after yo ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Mar 19, 2014 Molly rated it it was amazing

Spectacular. I cried through the last third, and I'm not much of a crier. And I found myself constantly astounded that this is a first novel. Six hundred pages and none of it wasted.

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

May 18, 2015 Connie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: on-kindle, new-authors-2015, best-of-2015-5-stars, 2015

I wasn't sure what I expected when I started this, but I loved, loved. loved this book.

Thomas tells a real story, of every day people, sometimes not likable people, sad people who are living a real life. His characters are so gritty. Overachievers, quiet men, confused children...all struggling to fit together. The story follows a family as they grow apart and back together.

There is tragedy and strength in this story and I will say there were parts I cried through.

His characters and their li ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Aug 25, 2014 RoseMary Achey rated it it was amazing

Raw emotion-that is what I felt reading We Are Not Ourselves. This debut work is about a family…not the wider world or the major events of the more than six decades it covers, just a family. Not even an extraordinary family, just a typical American family with so many dreams and aspirations-some of which will be accomplished, but many more will be rationalized or compromised away.

This book will leave you thinking deeply about your own life, your family and your place in the world. Stunning bea ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Jun 05, 2015 Carol rated it it was ok

Shelves: did-not-finish

What a long, slow, tedious journey this was! This book is a great case for “less is more.” None of the characters were all that interesting and became less and less interesting as the book droned on and on and on. The narrative was often meaningless. Characters are introduced for no apparent reason and then just dropped, never to reappear. Hints of deceit are made and then forgotten. I had had enough by page 450 and finally bailed out due to terminal boredom. I really just didn't care any longer ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Oct 27, 2015 TL rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to TL by: Stephanie Aikey

"There are things you feel that you can't explain," Ed said. "You know other people won't understand them."

One of those books that are so well done it seems beyond words to express how it makes you feel. I loved every part of this, even the slow parts... the parts that broke my heart, and even the stretches when not much happened.

Eileen, Ed, and Connell are good people but with their own flaws. They go through life doing the best they can, even when life throws things at them they didn't expect ...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

May 02, 2014 Mary Lins rated it liked it

Shelves: complete

“We Are Not Ourselves”, by Matthew Thomas, was recommended to me by a close reading friend who warned me that this novel is a “slow boil” and I wouldn’t realize what all the fuss was about until I’d been into it for a while. But I have to confess, I never did get to the point that I understood why there had been a bidding war in the publishing world over it. For me, it’s reasonably entertaining and interesting, but by no means magnificent.

It tells the story of Eileen Leary and her “absentminded “We Are Not Ourselves”, by Matthew Thomas, was recommended to me by a close reading friend who warned me that this novel is a “slow boil” and I wouldn’t realize what all the fuss was about until I’d been into it for a while. But I have to confess, I never did get to the point that I understood why there had been a bidding war in the publishing world over it. For me, it’s reasonably entertaining and interesting, but by no means magnificent.

It tells the story of Eileen Leary and her “absentminded professor” husband Ed, and their son Connell. I tried to think of adjectives to describe Eileen, who is the main protagonist and a nurse by profession, such as: cold, shrewd, xenophobic…but while those attributes can be defended, they don’t paint the full picture; Eileen is also fiercely loyal, loving, self-doubting and pragmatic.

I was often frustrated with Eileen. She cares so deeply about what others (even strangers) think of her that it often negatively determines her course of action or inaction. She becomes paralyzed by fear of reaction and several times in the narrative fails to act when necessary (example early on in a choking scene).

I was also easily frustrated by Connell, who also seemed to lack a force of will unless it was to make the inappropriate choice.

BUT, it’s unfair to be too critical of Eileen and Connell having never experienced the challenges that these two characters are forced to bear. Ultimately “We Are not Ourselves” (title hint: think of Nancy Reagan’s whisper to Ronnie: “We are doing all we can.”) is about the heartbreaking difficulty in letting go of our imagined future or a view of ourselves. I suspect most of us, having reached a certain age, have had to “recalibrate” what we hoped and planned our life would be into what we must accept it is.

Although I think the novel has been over-hyped, I never considered stopping reading – it definitely holds one’s interest – but it could have benefited from tighter editing, in my opinion.

(Note: For a wonderfully absorbing novel about the health care industry and what happens to a family when medical bills become insurmountable, I highly recommend Lionel Shriver's "So Much for That".) ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Aug 20, 2014 Cheryl rated it really liked it

Shelves: america, library, fiction

Points for keeping me reading it even though at first I wasn't too interested. Still....the flow kept pulling me.
But it came into its own about a third of the way in, as the real story began to emerge. Alzheimer's has such an insidious onset that it is hard to recognise at first. It gathers strength and becomes progressively disruptive of the mind, the personality, and the family. This was exceptionally well described and touching. And the letter toward the end squeezed a sob out, so bumped up f ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

May 27, 2014 Laurie • The Baking Bookworm rated it it was ok

Shelves: arc-netgalley, contemporary-fiction

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with a complimentary e-book copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

My Review: Lately I've been on a search to find a great sweeping saga of a read - one that spans a couple of generations and has a lot of drama. So when I read the description of this book on NetGalley it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

This book was described as 'epic in scope' so I suppose I was expecting much more of a intergenerati Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with a complimentary e-book copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

My Review: Lately I've been on a search to find a great sweeping saga of a read - one that spans a couple of generations and has a lot of drama. So when I read the description of this book on NetGalley it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

This book was described as 'epic in scope' so I suppose I was expecting much more of a intergenerational family saga with lots of energy, familial turmoil, engaging storylines and characters that I could root for. Unfortunately, this book wasn't what I expected and I had a hard time staying interested.

I admit that certain scenes were touching but overall the book felt excessively long and lagged most of the way. I think We Are Not Ourselves focuses so much attention on character development and relationships that the plot and energy waned and got bogged down in small, daily life details.

It didn't help that Eileen wasn't a character that I clicked with at all. She comes off as self-centred and always on the hunt for the 'things' that will make her happy. She was extremely superficial and I didn't connect with her at all. I'm still not exactly sure why Eileen's xenophobia was brought into the storyline either. It didn't seem to give me a better insight into her and made me like her even less than I already did.

Towards the end of this book I was still holding out hope that the author would divulge some big, monumental secret. Some family skeletons that were going to turn things around and give this book some oomph. Unfortunately that big reveal never came. I will say that I found this book, at times, quite touching and emotional due to personal connections that I have with one of the major issues in this book.

I truly wanted to like this book (and my feelings are in the minority with many other reviewers). But while I found this book to be well written unfortunately it was just too slow moving and I wasn't fond of the characters or its unrelenting melancholy.

My Rating: 2/5 stars

** This book review, as well as many more, can also be found on my blog, The Baking Bookworm (www.thebakingbookworm.blogspot.ca). ** ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Jun 10, 2017 Irene rated it really liked it

This is a slow, quiet book about nothing and everything. It follows the life of one woman from her childhood as the only daughter of Irish immigrants in New York City through her widowhood and her son’s maturation into an adult. This is a novel about the relationship between parent and child, husband and wife, inner and outer self. It is about the dreams of our parents, the courage to fight for dreams of our own, the maturity to accept the ways those dreams were modified by life. This is a book ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Passion for R...: * Appena pubblicato è entrato nella classifica del New York Times	7	16	Jul 04, 2015 07:40AM
2015 Reading Chal...: We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas	2	53	Jun 14, 2015 01:28AM
The Passion for R...: Citazioni d'autore	15	12	May 14, 2015 11:52AM
The Passion for R...: Una guida per i gruppi di lettura	2	12	May 12, 2015 05:41AM
Audio-Bibliophiles: April 2015 Whispersync Roundup	1	9	Apr 12, 2015 03:05PM

Readers Also Enjoyed

Videos About This Book

BN clip #1 “Starting the book” (w/ Misha Collins)

Add a comment

Eileen and Materialism (with Misha Collins)

Add a comment

Genres

Fiction

564 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

234 users

See top shelves…

About Matthew Thomas

Matthew Thomas

412 followers

Matthew Thomas was born and raised in New York City. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he has an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His New York Times-bestselling novel WE ARE NOT OURSELVES has been shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, and the John Gardner Fiction Boo ...more