This Is How It Always Is

by Frankel, Laurie
ISBN: 9781250088567
4.7 (3)
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Used - Trade Paperback - 9781250088567

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Overview

New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

"Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)


People Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2017
Amazon's Best Books of 2017: Top 20
Amazon's Best Literature and Fiction of 2017
Bustle's 17 Books Every Woman Should Read From 2017
PopSugar's Our Favorite Books of the Year (So Far)
Refinery29's Best Books of the Year So Far
BookBrowse's The 20 Best Books of 2017
Pacific Northwest Book Awards Finalist
The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2017
Longlisted for 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award

"It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think." --Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret...and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after...until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change...and then change the world.

This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Frankel, Laurie
  • ISBN: 9781250088567
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 8.40 x 1.00
  • Number Of Pages: 336
  • Publication Year: 2018

Customer Reviews

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5 ★   67%
4 ★   33%
3 ★   0%
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4.7
3 Ratings

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  • All the feels

    Linda R. - 4 years 11 months ago

    This book had me feeling every emotion. As a parent, daughter, health care professional, and member of LGTBQ+ community, I felt the writer was able to hit every emotion.

  • "When you’re alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell you get magic--twice...You share your secret, and you change the world.” #BannedBook

    Jennifer N. - 5 years 5 months ago

    “This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete contradictory information, you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening.” It’s parenting. “Parent time is like fairy time but real. It is magic without pixie dust and spells. It defies physics without bending the laws of time and space. It is that truism everyone offers but no one believes until after they have children: that time will actually speed, fleet enough to leave you jet lagged and whiplashed and racing all at once...It is so impossible yet so universally experienced that magic is the only explanation.” “Just because it’s made up doesn’t mean it isn’t real...Made up is the most powerful real there is...When you’re alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell you get magic--twice...You find out you’re not alone and so does everyone else. That’s how everything gets better...You share your secret, and you change the world.” In her world changing novel, Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is blends fairytale and science, magic and medicine, in a “transnavigated international journeying via hope, imagination, panic, and plane.” When asked if s/he is a boy or a girl, Poppy replies profoundly, “No...I’m all of the above and I’m also more to come.” The father’s parallel mythology that mirrors his son/daughter’s transformational journey reminds the reader of the power of story--to see the forest of human experience from the trees of our own immediate reality--and to return with greater empathy and decisiveness. Frankel’s novel is a necessary book that will leave readers craving “more to come.” #BannedBook

  • Beautiful written, a story of turmoil and acceptance

    Harrison D. - 5 years 10 months ago

    This book blends amazing story telling with, honestly, life lessons on acceptance and the turmoils of life. Top 5 books of this year, a must read!