Book Blurb:
From New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her beloved novel Count the Ways —a complex story of three generations of a family and its remarkable, resilient, indomitable matriarch, Eleanor. Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface. How the Light Gets In follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024) as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world (climate change, the January 6th insurrection, school violence) and shape their lives (later-life love, parental alienation, steadfast friendship). With her trademark sensitivity and insight, Joyce Maynard paints an indelible portrait of characters both familiar and new making their way over rough, messy, and treacherous terrain to find their way to what is, for each, a place to call “home.”
My Review: 4 stars
How the Light Gets In by Joyce Maynard was one that I could not wait to read. I totally needed this sequel to Count the Ways as it left me hanging and I missed these characters so very much.
Maynard is a wonderful writer and an exceptional speaker. I was lucky enough to see her on her book tour and her insight into the how and why she wrote a sequel was compelling. She’s down to earth and kind. If she hits your town, state or country – go see her; you won’t be sorry.
Back to the book, I loved the follow up on Toby. I think all the readers that read Count the Ways wanted to learn how he was doing. I adored watching Eleanor make time for herself and seeing how her kids and her grandkids fared. Lots of surprises that made me happy and quiet moments of reflection that made me weep.
I’m saddened that these characters will only be in my memory and that there will not be another tome added to this series. Maynard served them well and I was so happy to gobble this one up.
My rating went down only because I do not enjoy political commentary in my fiction. I don’t care what side you’re on, right or left, I prefer it not to be part of the narrative. I grew up outside DC and maybe growing up with all the mudslinging has me disgruntled. Who knows?
Hope you enjoy as much as I did.
Quotes I liked:
There could be no repairing the old mistakes. All a person could hope for was to do better in the future.”
“The only person whose happiness lay in one’s own hands was one’s own self.”
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