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birdykinsreads's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book was so beautiful and heartrending. Set in Newfoundland, The Remembering follows three generations of women (matriarch Liz, her daughters Ginny, Carlie and Eve, and Eve's daughter Rosie) over two decades as they navigate the trials and tribulations of life.
At the start of the novel, you meet this family at such a vulnerable time—there's a content warning for this—Eve has just returned home from Mexico where she suffered a harrowing sexual assault and her mother Liz is the first and only person besides her husband to learn of this and the following pregnancy that may or may not be a result.
It is such a difficult and devastating situation that Sinnott handles with such care, and so much of the book itself is centred around this one experience, their reactions to it, and how it shapes the rest of their lives.
How one violent act can echo for years.
The delicate way this book handles trauma is like the deft cracking of an egg, exposing all of the love, shame, family secrets and messiness of relationships that are always right there under the surface.
It's also about the ways in which memory can bolster or bury you, and what happens to a family when its beloved matriarch faces the endless mind-eroding disease of dementia. Sinnott does an amazing job of expressing the idea of memory and the way we are always recalibrating and reframing our own choices and experiences as we look back throughout our lives.
I really loved the way this book moved me, I was so invested in the Wallace family and I think this is a story that really longs and deserves to be read.
At the start of the novel, you meet this family at such a vulnerable time—there's a content warning for this—Eve has just returned home from Mexico where she suffered a harrowing sexual assault and her mother Liz is the first and only person besides her husband to learn of this and the following pregnancy that may or may not be a result.
It is such a difficult and devastating situation that Sinnott handles with such care, and so much of the book itself is centred around this one experience, their reactions to it, and how it shapes the rest of their lives.
How one violent act can echo for years.
The delicate way this book handles trauma is like the deft cracking of an egg, exposing all of the love, shame, family secrets and messiness of relationships that are always right there under the surface.
It's also about the ways in which memory can bolster or bury you, and what happens to a family when its beloved matriarch faces the endless mind-eroding disease of dementia. Sinnott does an amazing job of expressing the idea of memory and the way we are always recalibrating and reframing our own choices and experiences as we look back throughout our lives.
I really loved the way this book moved me, I was so invested in the Wallace family and I think this is a story that really longs and deserves to be read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
alisonburnis's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
betweentwobookends's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
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