NIGHTSTANDS & COFFEE TABLES

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“She could never explain this to her daughter. You made me recognize that my heart is, in fact, a bottomless hole of simultaneous pleasure and despair. You gave my life meaning and ruined it at the same time.”

Lombardo’s debut novel spans over forty years, but yet is current, with all the emotional turmoil easily expressed today applied to situations both now and a generation ago. It’s about love, loss, loving loss, resenting love, and all the ways that life forces us to adapt. Marilyn and David are a couple in love, almost sickeningly so, with four daughters. They can’t keep their hands off each other, and while their affection is the envy of even their own children, it doesn’t shield them from the hardships of married life. While of a generation that made marriage last, their daughters are struggling to find their places in relationships that seem lackluster in comparison. The narrative shifts from the daughters adjusting to adulthood, to the early days of Marilyn and David’s romance. The layers unfold oh so delicately, almost side-stepping plot shifts, a tactic rarely so eloquently done. What happens is not so much the focus of the book, but rather the trickle effect on the family. It’s the kind of book you can get lost in, that you hurry back to your bedside table a little earlier each evening to soak in the story a little while longer. The narrative is rich and deep and saturating. The female author writes the core of female emotion as if she’s lived the full life of one – surprisingly, Lombardo is only 30 years old.
Marilyn and her daughters have always existed in the shadows of one another. Marilyn sacrificed her dreams to raise children before she even considered what she wanted, as if she was so in love that she couldn’t help but breed love. She finds a new dream in her children, and the author doesn’t shy away from the sadness and beauty in that. Her husband David has the family he always wanted, yet he struggles to understand the five women in his life while retaining his own identity. He lets his wife lead their home because he knows it’s the only place she can. He bears the guilt of costing Marilyn her dreams and the satisfaction of having a wife who acts like one. “Marriage, she learned, was a powerful game, a careful balance of competing egos, conflicting moods. She could turn hers off in order to allow his to shine.”
The give and take of a romantic relationship is personified in this couple, yet not always clear who’s giving and who’s taking. As readers, we walk alongside this family, envying their highs and crying through their lows. The story is beautifully heartbreaking and heartwarming simultaneously, in hindsight, much like life itself. If there is a criticism of this work, it’s that it’s almost 600 pages; it’s a shame we couldn’t have 600 more.