Same As it Ever Was by Claire Lombardo
Claire Lombardo’s newest novel, SAME AS IT EVER WAS, is a heartrending look at what it takes to form and keep a family. Julia Ames was living the good life, about to enter contentedly into her empty nest years. She could check all the boxes – a husband who loved her, a son who had launched and was about to be married, and a daughter who was about to graduate from high school – until one day, while grocery shopping for her husband’s sixtieth birthday party, she runs into an old friend – one that brings back memories from a time in her life when things weren’t so perfect.
Plagued by self-doubt, Julia was an anxious and sometimes ambivalent mother when her children were young. SAME AS IT EVER WAS, is a book about motherhood – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and how as time marches forward, a mother can be all or any of those things.
Lombardo writes with great affection and empathy for her flawed characters. Julia’s careful love for her children, tempered by her own sad childhood and a legacy of poor parenting, led her to question her own ability to parent. When she met and was embraced by Helen, an older woman with a large family, she felt seen and valued for the first time in her life.
Over the course of this nearly 500-page novel, Lombardo masterfully excavates Julia’s past and projects us into her future. From a chaotic childhood in Chicago, raised by an alcoholic and psychologically abusive mother, to a reckoning with a grave lapse in judgment that almost ended her marriage in her thirties, and finally to her son’s wedding day and beyond, we get a glimpse of the events that formed Julia Ames.
Though a hefty book, you’ll tear through it, and if you’re a mother or had a mother (yes, I’m looking at you) you’ll relate to Julia and her experience. To be seen and heard. Isn’t that what we all want?
Highly recommended for fans of Ann Tyler, Ann Patchett, and Elizabeth Strout, SAME AS IT EVER WAS, is one of my favorite books of 2024. Listen to my interview with Claire Lombardo on Superior Reads on WTIP on June 27 at 7pm and June 29 at 6am.
