Marina Antropow Cramer

I received this book as an advanced reader copy from LibraryThing, it will be published February 13,2020.

This was a very short book for me, only 161 pages and yet it felt like it took forever to read.
This is a very dysfunctional family. The story takes place at the end of Adam’s kindergarteners. But there are a lot of flashbacks. Anna’s husband died from cancer when Eva was 16, this event seems to have caused a trickle down effect. Eva married Joe, and had Mimi. Eva left Joe before Mimi was one. There was some sort of incident with Eva and Mimi, where Eva beat Mimi once. It takes most of the book to find out the detail and the premise is that this incident shaped the relationships of Ana, Eva and Mimi.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I mean it was good, but I also felt like there was no resolution, Eva and Mimi’s relationship wasn’t repaired. They just were a little kinder at the end, maybe Cramer wanted to leave the reader to decide if the cracked door opened or not, but I felt unsatisfied at the ending. This was a small book, and I kept reading because I kept hoping to see the relationship between Eva and Mimi repaired, but it never really happened. I enjoyed the characters they were flawed, and I think if the book had been longer there could have been some real character growth.… (mehr)

A beautifully told story of three generations of women and their troubled realtionship. Anna is the matriarch. Eva is the daughter of Anna and the mother to Mimi. Mimi is the granddaughter to Anna, the daughter of Eva, and the mother to Adam. Adam is the great-grandson to Anna, grandson to Eva, and the son of Mimi.

When Mimi was younger her mother, in a moment of frustration and anger, hit her; hard. Anna witnessed the act. This act caused a strain in their relationships with each other. The book is told from multiple view points to help distinguish the characters and to get a better understanding of who each character is as an individual.

You get a look inside each of the characters minds and see things for what they are or how they interpert things. I highly recommend this book.… (mehr)