{"id":5419,"date":"2014-09-08T11:30:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T11:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5419"},"modified":"2014-09-11T12:46:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T12:46:23","slug":"we-are-not-ourselves-by-matthew-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5419","title":{"rendered":"We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by 4th<\/sup> Estate UK, Simon & Schuster US<\/strong><\/p>\n

640pp<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A panorama of twentieth-century North American family life rolls across the screen of Thomas\u2019s astonishingly mature debut novel, ten years in the writing and drawn from personal experience. Its central characters, Ed and Eileen Leary, personify the immigrant energy, social aspiration, financial concerns and middle class values of the USA in their era. \u2018Your family is good people,\u2019 son Connell is told.<\/p>\n

But bad things happen to good people and dementia arrives to reshape the trajectory of this nuclear unit. Tender and wrenching, the novel offers one particular family\u2019s response to human fate.<\/p>\n

Eileen, the primary character, is the daughter of a working-class Irish family who grows up in the shadow of her father\u2019s charisma and the darker moods of her alcoholic mother. A child of the 1940s and \u201850s, Eileen is bright and aware, conscious of her social class and lack of privilege compared to some. She is determined both to find a career and a good enough partner, a clever man whose work will simultaneously fulfil her and lift their marriage on to a higher social plane.<\/p>\n

That man is Edmund, a neurobiologist and teacher whose stubborn nature and beliefs lead to him turning down multiple opportunities for professional advancement. Eileen\u2019s frustration at these choices made about her life without her consent is tempered by her admiration for the partner she has chosen. And Eileen also makes choices for the pair of them, pushing Ed into home ownership, first in Jackson Heights, a suburb of Queens, New York, that will see significant demographic shifts in years to come, and later in Bronxville, an upmarket Westchester commuter town that accords better with Eileen\u2019s sense of a fit neighborhood.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Moving gracefully, vividly across the years, Thomas employs a realistic but not wholly linear mode. His narrative proceeds in slices \u2013 microscope slides, perhaps \u2013 of life. A current preoccupation, a professional dilemma, a moment of crisis \u2013 these snapshot episodes are fully visited but not always returned to in subsequent chapters. The effect is to light up a personality through flashbulb instances that accumulate into a composite character portrait. A stressful inspection at Eileen\u2019s hospital (she is a nurse); Connell\u2019s struggles with neighborhood bullies; Ed\u2019s efforts, as his powers start to fade, to imbue sporting qualities into his son \u2013 these small jigsaw pieces of marriage and parenting, of the tensions, private dilemmas and compromises of shared lives are deftly, subtly delineated by Thomas as he proceeds inexorably towards Ed\u2019s descent into early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Connell\u2019s and Eileen\u2019s responses to the harrowing process of the illness through its multiple phases reflect a corresponding multiplicity of facets in their own evolving personalities: shame, weakness, loyalty, guilt. Thomas cleaves to the long arcs of experience, the wheels turning, the ever-developing roles of father, mother, son. His novel, spanning fifty years, continues to move forward beyond Ed\u2019s demise, coming to rest as the circle turns once more and Connell and Eileen\u2019s roles revise themselves for the last time in our vision.<\/p>\n

This American epic offers a feast of mature storytelling. Cooler in the opening phases of Eileen\u2019s childhood, it hits its proper stride once Eileen and Ed have found each other and begun married life. Through their quotidian struggles and fluctuating feelings, an enduring evocation of everyday intimacy takes shape, one that is not expunged by Ed\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

In the closing pages, Eileen, now a widow, takes a trip back to Jackson Heights, to see what it was she so insistently forced her family to abandon. Happily, she discovers that the tenants from the old house have moved on and found their own success and happiness. \u2018I hope you have a lovely big backyard. I hope you flip steak and watch your daughters run around and think, I could die in peace,\u2019 she wishes, in response to the news. Such simple \u2013 and American – blessings, but not granted to everyone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Moving gracefully, vividly across the years, Thomas employs a realistic but not wholly linear mode. His narrative proceeds in slices \u2013 microscope slides, perhaps \u2013 of life. A current preoccupation, a professional dilemma, a moment of crisis \u2013 these snapshot episodes are fully visited but not always returned to in subsequent chapters. The effect is to light up a personality through flashbulb instances that accumulate into a composite character portrait […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5419"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5430,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions\/5430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}