My Irish catholic sister in law could have written what you wrote, she is eldest of five, and speaks about the cow bell to summon the clan home each night, another time ans world.
My other two Irish catholic friends, one eldest of six, and other youngest of seven, now I’m curious about how close they are with their siblings.
My sister and I are 13 months apart- and close, but growing up separate worlds, not so close, until we had children,
My mother one of five, extremely close to one sister, best friends, looked like twins, not so close to the other siblings.
I have 6 siblings and am varying degrees of close to each of them, which changes over times or due to different stages of life. We try to be kind to one another. I could never understand the triplets hostility—indifference maybe but not the hostility.
I thought a lot of it was not so much hostility to each other (though that was there to some degree) but the desperate desire to be a separate individual, not just one of the triplets. It was implied they felt this way from the minute they were born - this strong need to be an individual which in turn meant jettisoning any real relationship (or later any relationship at all) with the other two. Their individual relationships with phoebe suggest it wasn’t so much siblings they wanted no part of (at least once they got over their shock at her existence and she grew up a bit) but the other two triplets.
I thought the triplets antipathy might have been due in part to Johanna’s parenting style that made so many assumptions about who they were and what there were like. I think Phoebe was better off because Johanna had other things on her mind. My youngest brother was seven years younger than me, and five years younger than my other brother. That biggish gap meant he had very different parents than us two older ones and he was an only child for much of his elementary school years when my parents were stationed in Africa and we were in boarding school.
For me, I have mixed emotions of the book. I detested Salo and Stella. She knew that he was married, but she didn’t care. I have never been cheated on but I can’t tolerate cheaters. Get a divorce or just stop. If I had been Johanna, I would have donated the paintings under my name alone.
Salo was a hoarder just as the houses that Sally dealt with or Rochelle’s mom. He hid his hoard just like they did.
I was not surprised at all about Salo dying on 9/11. Once I figured out the time line, I expected it.
Harrison was my favorite because he was passionate about something earlier in his life (except for his dislike of his siblings). He hated his school for very good reasons.
I liked the others later in their lives. They all became much more interesting when they went to college.
I am not at home and am on my iPad, so please forgive any mistakes.
Salo was a rich hoarder. Easier than a poor hoarder because you can hide your stuff.
I’m not sure Salo was a hoarder but a passionate collector. Might be the same, just more expensive.
I thought the second half of the book saved the first part. Where no one was that likable but the characters redeemed themselves.
Johanna thought she could save Salo. Thought having a family would make her family whole. That didn’t happen either.
But Phoebe I thought was writing in a way that a child would write about their parent. She didn’t understand her mother and therefore the mom’s character wasn’t fully formed. On purpose.
Salo was a jerk. He was a jerk to his wife. He was a jerk to his parents. He was a jerk to his kids and he was a jerk not leaving his wife while having an affair and child with another woman.
The author didn’t sugarcoat Salo after he died in a way she think many people who die young are. I did like that part.
I think Johanna tried to be a good mother. She had a vision of what her family would/should look like, but it never materialized. I think she loved her kids, but she spent too much time trying to set up all the right family scenes and never stopped to just love and experience her children. Of course, Salo being an absent dad was not part of her perfect family vision and made things more difficult.
Anyone have any thoughts on why Johanna was getting the kids to be guardians for Phoebe at the particular time she was trying? Did she know Salo was getting ready to leave her? There was one scene the night of the big triplet fight on September 10th that I wondered if she was planning to take her own life. Not sure why I felt that way. She was laying in bed and Phoebe was crying. Something about that scene left me unsettled. I was wondering if anyone else felt the same way.
Johanna wasn’t a real person even to herself. She was trying to create an idealized domestic world and I feel like she never really thought about why she was doing that or whether there were alternatives. I’m surprised everyone is saying she was a good mother. I felt like she kept trying to make the kids into something they weren’t - she didn’t respect their individuality and who they were as individuals - but wanted them to be this idealized fantasy of a family. Which just exacerbated the triplets feelings of being trapped in a group with no room for them as individuals. Johanna knew Salo was damaged and emotionally unavailable when she married him but he otherwise fit her fantasy of how life is supposed to go and she married him for that fantasy - again not seeing him for the person /individual he really was. I don’t feel sorry for her - I don’t see her a a passive participant in the train wreck of her family but actually the architect of a lot of it. Johanna didn’t even try to understand her kids or husband - just orchestrated them through this fantasy life she had built up in her mind -
I also got the sense the Johanna might be wanting to take her life and urgently wanted the sibs to agree to be guardians if she was gone. Interesting she chose when Phoebe was nearly an adult going off to college to finally try to get guardians named.
I had this question as well and thought about her taking her own life but also felt that would not make for the right story (for the book). It was odd that wasn’t explained or revisited.
@HImom, if we’re thinking of the same scene, Johanna chose the triplets as guardians when Phoebe was still a baby. We only see that play out in detail with Lewyn – he looks at the baby in shock and says, “Wait, for her?”
“And this is your wish?” he asked her with true disbelief. “Me? That I’m her guardian?”
“Well, not just you,” our mother said, sounding the slightest bit impatient. “All three of you. The three of you should be responsible for your sister. I mean, who else?”
Anyone else, Lewyn thought. (p. 203)
After such reluctance, it was really nice to see what a sweet relationship he and Phoebe had as adults.
“Harrison was my favorite” is not a phrase I expected from anybody in this discussion! I love looking at him from another perspective.
One thing I wondered about Harrison is how could such a smart guy-- practically a genius – not have figured out Eli’s con?
I think Johanna needed that fantasy in order to survive – simply to make it from one day to the next. When she saw the writing on the wall–that Salo was going to leave her and destroy the fantasy–she may have considered ending her life. (I didn’t pick up on that, but since others did, I’m sure the undercurrent was there.)
Salo’s death allowed Johanna to start fresh and be a better mother to Phoebe than she was to the triplets. Not a perfect mother, but a good one. None of the characters are quick to offer compliments, least of all Harrison, but he tells Phoebe: “You don’t need looking after. You have a mother. You have an excellent mother” (p. 370).
Harrison was a smart guy and I did sometimes sympathize with him. Walden was a terrible school for him. * But He believed Eli, because of confirmation bias. Eli represented everything that he believed - merit is all, anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps etc. And he had very little emotional intelligence.
*Parenthetically I really appreciated once more my high school which had odd progressive quirks (like no academic awards), but mostly was a very typical prep school. However I was part of an experimental freshman year program and at one point a small group of us persuaded our history teacher to teach us medieval history instead of Egypt and Greece which we’d all done before. The next year I persuade a different teacher to let me study the French Revolution to contrast it with the American one, and at various times we asked for and got other course. Poor Harrision is just met with rejection at wanting to learn Latin.
I don’t necessarily think suicide’s in the picture when Johanna has Lewyn sign papers re guardianship. Johanna’s living in a “house of cards” and knows it. Technically enlisting the triplets to serve as guardians if something happens to her is a smart move. Salo is on his way out the door and she certainly doesn’t want Stella raising Phoebe. Remember Lewyn also glimpses legal documents re Stella before the attorney quickly hides them. Johanna may have protected the assets of the triplets at the same time.
As a child growing up in a similar house of cards, I know full well that my mother wanted my sisters to raise me should she no longer be able to do so.
Sorry, I got the time sequence confused. Now that you have raised it, it does sound familiar and make sense, regarding guardianship by triplets of very young Phoebe (when triplets were turning 20 and Phoebe only 3).
Somehow, I really had a hard time with Harrison. I have known many brilliant people but most of those I know are NOT arrogant. He just had a lot of emotional maturity he needed to develop. I suspect his ongoing relationship with Ebrahim may have helped with that because Ebrahim and Phoebe seem the most emotionally balanced of the young people.
Just joining the conversation since I finished the book about 5 minutes ago! Right up front I have to say I really liked the book, with all its quirks, surprises, and even shortcomings. Part of my “thumbs up” reaction is definitely due to the fact that I listened to Audible version. The narrator was excellent! (As a side note, I’m facing an enormous amount of weeding in our planting beds AND several long books to read for Book Clubs. Clearly I should have realized this before, but it just recently dawned on me that I could do both by listening to books as I weed!)
Re: September 11 – I knew the triplets were born in September and I knew their 19th birthday party was in 2001. When I think of “September” and “2001” I automatically think of 9/11, so when the storyline had Salo on the phone so long with American Airlines making reservations from the Vineyard to Boston to CA, I had a good idea what was going to happen.
I have identical twin brothers, 2 years older than me. From looking at old photos, I know they were dressed alike when they were young. They were in the same class all the way through Jr. High School (grade 8) and in a lot of the same classes in HS. Of course they stopped dressing alike as they got older, and they went to different colleges. But they shared a room growing up, and were often referred to as a “unit” – the twins; the boys. I imagine all of that would only be intensified among triplets.
Also on a related note, the whole IVF part of the story hit close to home. The first IVF baby was born in 1978 in England, but the first in the US was born in Dec., 1981 to my cousin and her husband. So, the triplets were apparently an “early success” in IVF in this country.
Wow! That’s fascinating. I remember the Louise Brown story so well. It ended up being a big focus of my senior year Bio-Genetics class in high school. PBS American Experience did a piece on the 1st U.S. IVF baby (@CBBBlinker, if you’re not comfortable with me sharing this link, let me know and I will delete): The US' First Test Tube Baby | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
@ignatius, as the “Phoebe” of your household of triplets, did you feel like an entire history had already taken place by the time you arrived on the scene?
In the interview posted by @HImom above, Jean Hanff Korelitz says:
I was especially interested in the impact on the later child of learning that their family has essentially begun without them. In one sense, it’s no different from what any younger sibling eventually realizes, but here the children have all been “made” at the same time, and there is a random or human factor in who gets born and who does not. I thought: What would that feel like, to realize what you’ve missed? And what if the later child somehow answers the brokenness in the older siblings and in the family as a whole? So, I made up a family to explore some of these issues and watch those ideas play out.
Being “no different from what any younger sibling eventually realizes” rings true to me. My oldest and my youngest are 15 years apart, and at times it seems like they came from different centuries, not just different decades. A pre-tech childhood (no internet, no cell phones) vs. a post-tech childhood. They joke now that they were raised by different parents because our style of parenting had changed so much in 15 years.