The Most Fun We Ever Had

April 22, 2019
Lombardo’s impressive debut follows the Sorenson clan—physician David, wife Marilyn, and their four daughters: Wendy, Violet, Liza, and Grace—through the 1970s to 2017. David and Marilyn raised the family in a rambling suburban Chicago house that belonged to Marilyn’s father. The daughters find varying degrees of success in their professional lives but fail to find the passion and romance that their parents continue to have in their own marriage. Wendy is a wealthy widow with a foul mouth and a drinking problem. Violet is a former lawyer turned stay-at-home mother of two young sons. At 32, Liza is a tenured professor with a depressive boyfriend. The baby of the family, 20-something Grace, is the only one of the daughters to have moved away, and now lives in Oregon. The daughters’ lives are in various stages of tumult: Wendy locates Jonah, the teenage son Violet gave up for adoption years prior; Violet struggles to integrate Jonah into her perfectly controlled life; Liza is shocked to discover she is pregnant; and Grace lies about being in law school after she was rejected. Lombardo captures the complexity of a large family with characters who light up the page with their competition, secrets, and worries. Despite its length and number of plotlines, the momentum never flags, making for a rich and rewarding family saga.

Narrator Emily Rankin's worldly voice complements Lombardo's heartfelt novel, which chronicles a forty-year marriage and the lives of the four daughters who are affected by it. David Sorenson and Marilyn Connolly met during college in 1975 and fell in love. By the spring of 2016, their daughters are facing difficult matters. Meanwhile, the Sorensons' marriage hasn't been easy, despite how it looks, and a secret could jeopardize the entire family. Rankin offers a dignified approach to her narration and provides precise depictions of each of the daughters, especially during turbulent moments. Her ability to intriguingly reveal family secrets and tenderly describe the closeness among the daughters makes this a compelling story of complicated family dynamics. D.Z. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine