From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

This Is How It Always Is

Laurie Frankel

Start date: May 1, 2019

Finish date: May 31, 2019

Discussion: 2019 Monthly Challenge

Why we're reading this: Our monthly read for May 2019 (a book about a family)
[close] Our monthly read for May 2019 (a book about a family)

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2019 Monthly Challenge

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What Members Thought

Feb 11, 2018 Anna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I feel like this is an important book. I was at a meeting one time about our school district's funding which devolved into a horrific discussion of transgender bathrooms in the schools, in which the women were terrified transgender children were going to molest their children. It was one of the most misinformed and horrific conversations I've ever heard. The lack of understanding/empathy around the issue of non-gender conforming/transgender children was nauseating. I want all those women to read ...more

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Apr 12, 2020 Gina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

What an incredible book of, get this, a loving, functional, family. Rosie and Penn are loving parents to a brood of boys, or so they think. When the smart, delightful Claude knows that he is really a girl, his parents do exactly what they should do to support their child. But that doesn’t mean it will be an easy road ahead.
A truly wonderful book.

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Jun 23, 2021 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: psychology, political, family-story, marriage, coming-of-age-novel, grief, middle-school, geographical, friendship

It's a wonderful book. The parents seemed real to me, with their privilege, their contradictions, their dreams for their own lives and the lives of their children. The lesson: "life will not be perfect" takes a long time for them to accept, and the seasoning of schmaltz, which some readers whose opinions I value, found utterly annoying. Several set the book aside, even though several agreed the topic is one that needs to be explored in literature. I didn't, I actually loved it. Probably the fact It's a wonderful book. The parents seemed real to me, with their privilege, their contradictions, their dreams for their own lives and the lives of their children. The lesson: "life will not be perfect" takes a long time for them to accept, and the seasoning of schmaltz, which some readers whose opinions I value, found utterly annoying. Several set the book aside, even though several agreed the topic is one that needs to be explored in literature. I didn't, I actually loved it. Probably the fact that I know families with children who are certain they were born into a body that is not their actual, bodily experience of their gender. The author's willingness to take on these complications, as well as the imperfections of each member of the family, made the book work for me. I loved the section in which the mom and the youngest child travel to serve in another country (the mom is a doctor).

Several readers suggested it for middle and high school readers. I think it depends on the teen or tween's exposure to issues of transgenderism.

Some passages that are spoilers:
Rose asks her husband: "Remind me again why we're doing this?"
Penn: "We asked him. This is what he said he wants."
"He doesn't know what he wants. He's only five."
"In rder to be happy," Penn added.
"He can't possibly understand, let alone weigh, what's going to happen if he goes to school dressed as a girl."
"A fairy."
"A girl fairy." 83

The girls who invited Poppy over had crates of tutus and high heels and dress-up clothes....they chased each other around and when they caught you at the end, they just hugged and giggled and laughed together instead of making a big deal about who was a loser and sitting on your head and farting. Poppy couldn't understand why everyone didn't want to be a girl. 98-9

At first, when they move, Rose and Penn tell no one. "Not everyone has to know," Penn said. "She can just be Poppy for a while. We can always tell people later."..."You can tell anytime, but once people know, they can never unknow." For such a short statement, it was astonishing how much of it proved untrue.

205 "The only way forward was deeper"...the way it is with serious illness, or serious difference.

The trip to Thailand is my favorite part of the book, I think...but I'll leave that for readers to discover themselves. ...more

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Jan 05, 2020 Jeannine J9 rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

This book was one of the best books I’ve ever read. Really tough subjects in the book yet the author writes so eloquently and addresses each aspect so thoughtfully. I loved this entire family and felt like I lived their lives with them. One of my 5 best ever books.

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