How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

by Anna Montague

For fans of Less and Remarkably Bright Creatures comes a funny and moving novel about love, loss, and new beginnings found on an unlikely road trip

Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara’s prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara’s possessions. She’s fine.

But in going through Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers her friend’s last plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda’s upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara’s urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters—including her sister, from whom she’s been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women’s retreat meant to “unleash one’s divine feminine energy” in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself—and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.

As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it’s never too late to start your next journey.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Contemporary, LGBT, Queer, Grief, Friendship

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[Angie Miale · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have liked this book so much better had the blurb not been incorrect. This is a painfully constructed novel. One of those books someone writes and edits and re-edits and shares with an elite writers workshop. Sentences that someone has memorized.

This is a soft spoken grief novel. An unrequited love, sapphic, journey of loss through ordinary life. This book is surprising but not heartwarming. No mystery or even romance, but a deep character development over the course of years of a friendship. It’s an odd title and an odd choice of cover art.

A 70 year old Manhattan therapist and her near self-indulgent quest to make sense of her friendships and love over the course of her life. Read it slowly and with an open heart.

[Susie Farrington · Rating 2 out of 5]

Must be read slowly to absorb all of the nuances of friendships. Too tedious and did not care about any of the characters. I kept asking myself “why am I continuing to read this?”

[Mary Cecena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found that by halfway through, I stopped caring about Magda and how she felt. I forced myself to skim to the end but cannot recommend.

[Paula W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to the author, publisher, and libro.fm for the advance listening copy (audiobook). Publication is scheduled for 10/22/2024. This audio is narrated by the amazing Cynthia Nixon (a woman of many talents, but most well known as her character Miranda in Sex and the City). And she does a fantastic job.

Magda is a therapist who has patients that rely on her to help them. She is a colleague who has coworkers she must help mediate. But she is also mourning the recent loss of her best friend Sara, and is trying her best to deal with Sara’s widower in going through Sara’s old stuff. Magda finds a journal where Sara planned a road trip for Magda and her for Magda’s upcoming 70th birthday. So, Magda decides to take the trip alone — with Sara’s urn in tow.

If you have ever had a best best BEST friend that you do everything with, and then they go and get a boyfriend or husband and choose this dusty, crusty, mediocre thing over you and your time together, you’ll understand this book. I tend to do this type of fierce friendship sometimes and it is hard to learn you were just a friend when they were your sort of soulmate. Magda learns some things about her sexuality that don’t apply to me, but I understand them.

This is an LGBTQIA+ friendly book. And it is definitely NOT a fun road-trip-with-a-friend-and-hilarious-stuff-happens book. It is often sad, but it ends in a hopeful spot with some potential second chances.

[Kim McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magda is a psychiatrist who has the difficult problem of having to analyze herself while on a roadtrip with her recently deceased best friend. Sara planned the trip years ago for their 70th birthdays but now it is Magda who must grieve the loss of Sara, of their friendship and lost years in general. Driving cross country with your friend's ashes riding shotgun isn't everyone's idea of a fun time but Magda feels like she owes it to Sara to do this trip. Skirting across country she does meet some interesting people who set off some sparks and comes away with a better understanding of Sara and herself through Sara's old letters and many one way conversations with the urn and defunct text messages. This is a thoughtful jaunt not completely without incidents but it does beg the reader to let go of regret, take a leap of faith and grab those second chances for love that may come along the way. A solid roadtrip readalike would be GRACELAND by Nancy Crochiere. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator doesn't get any better than Cynthia Nixon. My thanks to the publisher and Libro.fm for the advance copy.

[Sharon L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fooled by the cover art. I was expecting a fun and quirky story about two best friends, one living and one dead, taking off for a wild road trip. Instead, I got a slightly sad story of grief and unrequited love that even the few humorous happenings during the road trip couldn't lift the general tone of the story.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Libro.FM for an ALC as part of their Advanced Listening Copies for Librarians program.
https://libro.fm/alc-program

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost 70 myself, I read and related to becoming an invisible person as I age.
Magda’s journey drew me in as she searched for the meaning behind Sarah’s birthday trip they would never be able to take together because of Sarah’s unexpected death.

[Andrea Press · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so boring. A book about a depressed therapist whose unrequited love interest dies and she goes on a road trip that said love interest was planning for. The book did end well, as she did meet a new love interest, Judy but that was far too late for me to care. There was also no mention on how she met Sara, unless I missed it or her relationship history between her teenage years until she was 70.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

This was a moving debut about grief and unrequited Sapphic love told from the perspective of 70 year old therapist, Magda Eklund. Covering Magda's childhood into her present life, we get to see how she grew up with Swedish immigrant parents, her younger sister and did not feel able to be openly gay growing up or even as an adult. The one love of her life, Sarah, dies unexpectedly causing Magda to spiral and struggle to accept the loss of her dear friend.

Magda embarks on a road trip of all the places Sarah had wanted the two of them to visit as a sort of memorial tour. Heartfelt and good on audio narrated by actress Cynthia Nixon! Highly recommended for fans of books like Mrs Nash's ashes by Sarah Adler or The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

[Stacey Macdonough-wolfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting emotional journey and roadtrip of Magda. It dealt well with loss and getting older. I loved the phone calls between Magda and her sister. They made me chuckle. Positive message about love. Audiobook

[Mariah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The dialogue was hard to follow. Thanks to Ecco books for the ARC 💖

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague 🍂

In this book, the novel centered around Magda, a 70 year old psychiatrist, who then goes on a roadtrip with her best friend’s ashes. I thought this was a very interesting premise and made me curious about her story. Along the way, Magda met a lot of people but unfortunately some of the characters that were introduced didn’t really stick to me. I also find Magda’s character a bit challenging to connect to but I still can’t help but root for her.

There were also a lot of themes explored in this book like grief, friendship, aging, unrequited love, the choices we make in life but my favorite is probably the self-discovery and that even when we’re older, there are still a lot of things we don’t know about ourselves.

Overall, I think it’s a sweet and warm story but also a little bit sad. If you’re looking for that melancholic slow-paced kind of read, I recommend checking this one out! A good Fall read!

Thank you @eccobooks and @librofm for my gifted copy of this book. I listened to the audiobook version halfway through the story and the narration was actually great! 🤗

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magda Eklund is a 70 year old practicing psychiatrist whose closest friend, Sara, has unexpectedly died despite having been consumed with extending her own longevity with reams of kale and chalky protein shakes. Magda is in such despair — going to the movies alone, going to dinner alone, going on vacation alone — that she unspools an elaborate fiction for her sister, Hedda, omitting that Sara had passed away and, when Sara’s husband, Fred, introduces his new girlfriend, Gloria, at a dinner party, a mere six months after Sara’s death, Magda faints.

Fred gives Magda Sara’s correspondence and the urn containing Sara’s ashes explaining, “I need you to watch the urn. Just while Gloria settles in.” In Sara’s effects, Magda learns that Sara had planned a road trip for the two of them. “Places that mattered to us, places we wanted the other to see.” Magda did not believe that the road trip would have occurred if Sara survived “given how things had been between them toward the end.” The easy rapport of their friendship had given way — after Sara remained with Fred despite his infidelity — to something more polite and distanced, with Sara often distracted and forgetful. Nonetheless, with the encouragement of her colleagues, Boomer and Theo, Magda jettisons her structured life and embarks on the road trip that Sara had imagined to navigate their relationship and to explore her own past.

Magda’s travels take her to Virginia, Tennessee, New Orleans, Texas and New Mexico, where she interacts with a succession of engaging characters, but the real power of the journey is Magda coming to accept and find comfort and happiness in her sexual identity. Magda wanders into a women’s retreat, where the director’s words prove prophetic: “The real trips happen here, in our heads. In our hearts.” Montague’s debut artfully and sensitively explores universal themes such as friendship, loss, regret, aging and self-discovery. This debut novel gave me Sigrid Nunez vibes. Thank you Ecco and Net Galley for this advanced copy of a novel that delivers both humor and pathos.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hated everything about this book-had high hopes, but hated the writing style, the characters were all very flat, I just could not finish.

[Lauren H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was between a 2 and a 3 for me. I can see how it would appeal to older people. It was a coming of age story but the character is 70, so overall a sweet moral.

However. I did not root for her and was generally annoyed by her actions. The writing was very much like a road trip, very meandering and didn’t really have a destination for most of it.

They really played up the frail old lady. She got at least two headaches and joint pain each chapter (there are 58 chapters)

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb set me up for a very different book than what is between the covers. Less hilarious road trip full of colorful characters and more a quiet reflection of life and love and loss

[mallory logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last book of January 🌟

This wasn’t necessary a bad book, but considering I started it over two months ago, I have to give it 2 stars. The ending almost made it a 3 star for me, but it wasn’t enough. I just wanted more out of the ending. But simultaneously, Magda’s inner monologue was almost too much for me. I saw another GR review that said the blurb was super misleading, and I have to agree with that. Magda’s solo road trip across the country was egregiously more boring than I believed it would be, and I thought she was really over analyzing… everything. I don’t mind an awkward protagonist, but to pair an awkward protagonist with a super slow-moving plot, who’s trapped in a car by herself with only her inner thoughts.. I just simply didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I never DNF’d it, but I kept getting bored and putting the book down. I was determined to finish, though, because I had so much hope for it.

The characters are super interesting. Magda herself is interesting. Even the concept of the plot is very interesting. So I’m not completely sure how it managed to fall so flat for me.

🌟 2/5 🌟

[Rebecca Shelton]

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

I really wanted to like this book :( The premise sounded so promising—Magda, a therapist with her own quirks and routines, dealing with the loss of her best friend Sara, and then embarking on a cross-country road trip with Sara’s urn. It had all the makings of a touching and profound journey of self-discovery and healing.

But I just couldn’t get into it. I managed to get through about 15% of the book before I had to put it down. Unfortunately, I found myself feeling really bored. The pacing felt slow, and I struggled to keep the characters straight. Despite the intriguing setup, the story didn’t grab me the way I hoped it would.

It’s always disappointing to not finish a book, especially one that you have high hopes for. I was particularly interested in the exploration of Magda’s sexuality and identity, and how she would navigate those questions later in life. But the writing just didn’t engage me, and I found my attention wandering.

Maybe it’s just me, and perhaps others will find the story more compelling. But for now, it just didn’t resonate with me the way I wanted it to.

[Olivia Swindler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly Cynthia Nixon is an amazing audiobook narrator! I really enjoyed this moving novel and Magda and her grieving process. This book is heavier than the cover would imply and feels very ANXIOUS PEOPLE adjacent.

Thank you to libro.fm for my ALC.

[Terry Abeline Carden · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose this book for its interesting concept. Magda is a psychiatrist in NYC who is hitting the milestone birthday of 70. Her best friend died unexpectedly 9 months ago, leaving her with a void that cannot be filled. When her friend’s husband asks Magda to take her urn of ashes and some letters with her friend’s plan for a road trip, Magda decides to take the road trip with her ashes. Sounds great, right? I just couldn’t get into the extremely descriptive writing, the flawed characters (all of them) and decided 3/4 of the way through that I was not going to finish the book. If I don’t care what happens, I’m wasting my time. Perhaps the last 70 pages redeemed the story, but I’ll never know, and honestly I don’t care.

[Janet Rosfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magda Eklund is a psychiatrist approaching her 70th birthday, who finds herself on a road trip with an urn holding the cremated remains of her best friend Sara. Magda has withheld her own desires and feelings for most of her life, always cautious and reserved. Magda's doctor friends since college Theo and Boomer, Sara an art curator and her prickly husband Fred comprise Magda's inner circle. After the sudden death of Sara, Magda becomes unmoored and with Sara's urn in tow, she travels across the country encountering many memorable character. Magda struggles to confront the guilt she feels about leaving her younger sister Hedda behind to care for their ill and aging parents. Magda also faces the questions she has refused to face about her sexuality and identity.
This is a book that will make you think about the "big" issues of life and death, and who you really are in this life. With two thirds of my own life over, I have to say that this 30 something ,first time author has nailed what it feels like to be older, facing declining abilities, the loss of irreplaceable friends and the life affirming knowledge that, yes you can go on and be content in this your life.

[Karyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up on one of my many trips to the library, as it seemed intriguing. One of the blurbs on the back was written by Jonas Jonasson, who wrote The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, which I quite enjoyed, and he said that this book was “At once tender and hilarious…” My dude, did we even read the same book? Yes, it was tender, but I must have missed the hilarity.

Magda Eklund, a 70-year-old therapist in practice with two of her med school buddies, embarks on a road trip after losing her dearest friend Sara, a person she has loved in silence for most of their lives. Of course, she learns a lot about herself and about her relationship with Sara during this road trip, but there is so much navel gazing that I was hard-pressed at times to keep my eyes open. And there was so much shifting in the time line that I was never very certain whether Sara was still alive or whether she had passed on.

I appreciated that we have a book about a gay 70-year-old woman, but it was just too slow and introspective for me.

[Hypha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so very boring.
I picked it up because the premise sounded interesting. A woman, bereft at her closest friend’s passing, travels to try and reconnect with what was left of their friendship. There’s so much potential there!
But it all fell flat. The story moved along too quickly, the characters felt one dimensional, and the format of the book forced everything to be so shoved together I could barely keep in some instances.
This book wins a whole star though for having a happy ending. And a lesbian happy ending too!

Overall, this could have been better as vignettes of her travels that had more characters for her to interact with. Magda needed something to do, and this book spent a whole lot of time explaining how she did nothing.

[Jessica Lewis ☔️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

quirky characters. a fun journey through grief and being true to yourself including an actual road trip.

sara often annoyed me with her flippant approach to her relationship with magda. but i think in the end a lot of it was her questioning her own self, feelings and beliefs. i think she lacked introspection. she had larger than life approaches to love and loving her friends without much care put into her follow through or consideration for others.

i love boomer and theo as supporting characters because they were exactly that!

magda’s road trip journey to help her handle her grief over sara was the perfect explorative journey to find her self and learn to be honest with herself and others giving in to the time she needed to do that. so sad at points as characters realized they weren’t living their lives for themselves and not in a selfish was bit realizing too late that they didn’t do the things they really wanted.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Magda Eklund is a successful therapist, age 70. She has never married and shares offices with friends Theo and Boomer who she's known since at least college. Her very close friend, Sara has just died and Magda is understandably distraught. Magda has lead a closed off life. She has friends, sure, but she's never really opened up to Theo, Boomer and especially not Sara. Magda's friends always make a huge deal about her birthdays and Sara's gifts are always out-of-the-ordinary. Prior to her death, Sara had started to set up a road trip for the two of them. Magda decides to take the road trip, traveling with Sara's ashes.

This is definitely a character-driven book. It's a slog at some points but once it finally gets moving along (with about 100 pages left), everything becomes clearer. I probably should have been more perceptive.

[Luciana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is about Magda who is 70, a psychologist, has never married & decides to set out on a journey with her best friend. However, her best friend died suddenly, so she takes the ashes along to rediscover what Sara would have loved about her adventures.

Along the way, Magda looks back to her past to think about how life was & thinks about how her life is now & then how life can be so short. That perhaps making amends & moving forward, life can be worth living again.

I think this had the potential to be a really good novel, but I felt it fell flat in many spots. Magda didn't really come to life & it was tedious. However, I did finish it thinking it would get better.

[Matt Chisling (MattyandtheBooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mini-Review: This novel felt like the Sapphic companion piece to LESS, another powerful novel exploring the perils of aging, the danger of looking too far back, and the ways that queer people grow up and grow into identities at a different clip than their more heteronormative counterparts. This story of a road trip, derailed by the death of our protagonist's best friend and the trip's original planner, is a thoughtful examination of the life of a troubled closeted psychiatrist on the eve of her 70th birthday. Wise, wistful, and just a little wry. (And the audiobook is narrated by Cynthia Nixon!)

[Vikki Reich · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a book centers on one character, I think it’s important that the character’s actions make sense, that there is enough context for the reader to grasp the character’s motivation. There were a lot of things that the main character did that I didn’t understand. I will say that I thought the ending was well constructed and satisfying. Not sure I would recommend the book to others though. With everything happening in the world, especially in regards to LGBT issues, it is not the best time to read about tragic unrequited lesbian love. In that way, it felt like a very old book.

[Padiecakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was good from start to middle but then the ending was another ending I wasn’t happy with. I didn’t connect with the ending. It felt forced. Reading this felt like sitting at a dinner table with people I don’t know who tell stories of other people I don’t know. I can pick up a few, but it just didn’t feel right.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so boring. I managed to get through the first 75 pages before just skimming it to be done. Maybe it gets better after page 76 in detail, but I was not interested.