Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

The Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

512 pages

Published June 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo’s debut was dubbed “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler” (The Guardian) and hailed as “ambitious and brilliantly written” (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up—another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng—Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.

She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. 

My Thoughts: 

I’m just going to honest up front about this one. Same As It Ever Was was a tough read for me, both in the content and in actual act of reading it. At over 500 pages, it was going to take a while for me to get through, even if it had really gripped me. It did not. I felt like I was slogging my way through mud. 

There wasn’t a single character in this book that I didn’t find annoying in some way by the time I was finished with it. I often found myself skimming, feeling like things were just being rehashed, and felt like the book could easily have been 100 pages shorter and still conveyed the messages that Lombardo intended. Had it all ended in a way that I found satisfactory, it would have redeemed itself to some extent. It did not. While I appreciate a book that doesn’t put a bow on it and everyone lives happily ever after, I wasn’t entirely sure that any of these characters was going to be truly happy ever. 

But Ron Charles, of The Washington Post, said of this book: 

“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.”

Was this merely a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me? Possibly. But I don’t think so. I think, for me, this was simply the wrong book.