A review by reading_rainbow_with_chris
Small World by Laura Zigman

dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

“Small World” by Laura Zigman

Approaching 50, Joyce suddenly finds herself divorced and working from home. Her sister Lydia moves in, experiencing an almost identical situation. Haunted by a mother who neglected them to care for their third developmentally disabled sibling and challenged in the present by two eccentric upstairs neighbors, the two sisters figure out how to live together again and to come to terms with their past. 

This book just did not sit right with me. It grates on me when characters are written such that the things which make them kind of awful people are framed as quirks and history to be unraveled. Joyce is mean-spirited, Lydia is rude and obliviousness, and neither of them are good at communication this late in life. Additionally, there are too many variables in their story. At first this feels like it will be about the sisters living together. Then it becomes about the upstairs neighbors. Then it’s about the mom and their disabled sister who passed (both of whom are handed a disproportionate amount of the blame for the bad behavior of the adult sisters). Then at about 85% it’s about a HUGE bombshell that could have been the whole focus of the book. Then at 90%, another bombshell, barely with any time for Joyce to process the first and yet it all seems right as rain. I’m just not here for that kind of timeline. 

In short, this book feels like it’s trying to do something heartwarming, a reconciliation story. But it’s poorly paced, with characters making excuses for their behaviors at the expense of their families in a way that feels like it marks disabled family members as a cause of trauma. The most interesting element of the sisters’ stories were revealed far too late, too late to be genuinely explored and dealt with. The book is harmless enough, but I can’t say it endeared me to go any further with Zigman in her writing.