Same As It Ever Was: A Novel

by Claire Lombardo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Sure, marriage is hard, but it makes for great reading. Lombardo is a joy to read — especially when your own family starts to stress you out.

The New York Times bestselling author of THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.

At fifty-seven, Julia Ames is living an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination toward self-sabotage and prickly alienation, she has found herself with a husband she loves, two happy children, and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. When she bumps into an old friend that she hasn’t spoken to in years—a friend who almost ended her marriage decades prior—Julia finds herself reexamining her supposedly happy life. Compounded with a bombshell announcement from her son and her daughter’s impending departure for college, this chance meeting threatens to send Julia spinning out of control.

Daunted by a looming empty nest, Julia becomes consumed with her checkered past—and with the chaos of her present. She grapples with a complicated new daughter-in-law, the reappearance of her own estranged mother, and the forbidden allure of rekindling a relationship that was once both her lifeline and her downfall. The novel follows Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months as well as the fifty-plus years that preceded them, from her chaotic childhood in Chicago to her fraught early days of marriage and motherhood. SAME AS IT EVER WAS ultimately examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman’s life and asks what it takes to form—and keep—a family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593915301
Publisher:	Diversified Publishing
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	768
Sales rank:	132,129
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

CLAIRE LOMBARDO is the author of The Most Fun We Ever Had. She lives in Iowa City, where she has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and works part-time as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books.


www.clairelombardo.com

Editorial Reviews

NAMED A BEST FICTION OF 2024 PICK BY PEOPLE

"You need to read this....Claire Lombardo is the new Anne Tyler, with teeth."
–Ericka Waller, author of Dog Days

“Infidelity, dysfunction, secrets – this family novel delivers. . . Poignant, punctilious. . . [Lombardo] refashions domestic drama into something rich and strange, with echoes of Lorrie Moore’s sardonic humor and Jonathan Franzen’s dissection of class. . . In less skillful hands, Same as It Ever Was would lose control over its transitions and veer toward soap opera; yet like Franzen’s Marion Hildebrandt, or Faye, the narrator of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, Lombardo gives us a woman whose inner life is knotted and revelatory. . . Same as It Ever Was is a brave, nuanced book, lulling us with its rhythms but taking risks when we glance away.”
–Hamilton Cain, The New York Times

“Lombardo’s witty, sympathetic take on motherhood exudes the sharp scent of fermented apple juice and a full diaper… Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family’s fabric. She understands the chemistry of that special epoxy of irritation and affection that keeps a marriage glued together. One finishes Same As It Ever Was with the satisfaction of knowing this complicated woman well — and the poignant disappointment of having to say goodbye.”
–Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“This is one of those beautifully written, keenly observed novels where not that much happens — other than, you know, life itself — but also so much happens. . . Claire Lombardo has written a whole cast of characters so detailed, so specifically themselves, that you almost feel you could reach out and touch them.”
– Samantha Balaban, NPR

“A capacious, tender family drama and ode to marriage. . . Lombardo is a writer who lavishes attention to her characters. . . Same As It Ever Was is a fine-grained portrait of a woman determined to learn how to be a mother, wife, daughter – and person. It builds to a moving climax, encompassing along the way unexpected weddings, funerals, reconciliations, and losses. Like life itself.”
–Christian Science Monitor

“Lombardo continues her astute and entertaining observations about messy family dynamics and the imprint they leave on us. . . with wit and a keen eye for the complications of modern life.”
–The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“An engrossing story of maternal complexity and a reminder of the myriad ways the past can quietly inform the present.”
–Bookpage

"Masterful."
–People

“Pitch-perfect. . . Lombardo is compulsively readable and consistently funny, and it’s impossible to look away as Julia continues to self-sabotage. This domestic drama hits all the right notes.”
–Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

"Lombardo loves her characters, taking time to peel back each of their layers through the time-lapse structure of the novel and her rich descriptions. . . A sure bet for fans of Richard Russo and Jane Smiley.”
–Booklist

“Sparkling. . . Readers will be torn between their instinct to race to the finish and their desire to savor every page.”
–Publisher's Weekly Summer Reads

“Witty and insightful...a powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self.”
–Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2024

Lombardo (The Most Fun We Ever Had) returns with the pitch-perfect tale of a complicated friendship and the fallout from an extramarital affair. Julia Ames, 57, is a married mother of two living in a Chicago suburb. While grocery shopping for her husband’s 60th birthday dinner, she encounters an older woman named Helen Russo, one of the “small handful of people whom she has truly hoped to never encounter again.” Julia first met Helen 20 years earlier in the botanic garden where she used to take her first child, Ben, when he was three. Back then, in her “pre-Helen energy,” Julia was a “hollow-eyed, socially inept young mom” who cried easily. Helen, a wealthy retired attorney and mother of five, took Julia and Ben under her wing, welcoming them into her charmingly messy “Capital-H Home,” where people were cheerfully discerning about wine and casually referenced their distinguished forebears. Julia, who came from modest means and was estranged from her mother, was enchanted. Lombardo effortlessly flits from Julia’s present-day party preparations and other family occasions—Ben’s wedding, her daughter’s departure for college—to flashbacks of the women’s burgeoning friendship, slowly building to the reason for its dissolution two years after it began: Julia’s affair with Helen’s 29-year-old son, Nathaniel, who had the “biceps of a Renaissance sculpture.” Lombardo is compulsively readable and consistently funny, and it’s impossible to look away as Julia continues to self-sabotage. This domestic drama hits all the right notes. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2024-04-05
As Julia approaches 60, she clarifies her identity as mother, wife, and daughter in this novel of domestic ambivalence.

As well as a meditation on good and bad mothering, this is a novel about “marriage in the aftermath of an affair.” Part-time librarian Julia Ames has settled into a long marriage with ever-patient, ever-loving (a little too perfect to believe) husband Mark in the Chicago suburbs. Now, as Julia and Mark face major changes—their 24-year-old son’s impending marriage and fatherhood, their daughter’s high school graduation and departure for college—a brief encounter with a once close friend prompts Julia to reexamine her personal history. In obsessive, sometimes repetitive detail, she rehashes instances of fear, resentment, and anxiety and her overpowering sense of not fitting in. She also relives the choices she made that almost derailed her life. Julia is not exactly a sympathetic or trustworthy character. Insecure and uncomfortable with most people, including her children—to whom she’s offered deep but ambivalent love—she has difficulty expressing affection and tends to shut down difficult conversations with snarky wit. But if she is judgmental, she is most critical of herself and clearly wounded; her single mother had neither time nor inclination to parent her properly, and Julia’s hints about a major adolescent trauma build to an eventual anticlimactic reveal. While the “preposterous political landscape” remains in the background, class and entitlement issues are front and center. In addition to her mother’s emotional neglect, financial insecurity marred Julia’s childhood, rendering her a cynical but keen-eyed observer of the wealthy, educated world in which she has landed, a world that allows Julia’s crises, however initially unnerving, to end in soft landings.

Lombardo’s density of sociological and psychological details is immersive at best but can sometimes be enervating.

Kirkus Reviews