This morning Gigi left her husband and children.
Now she’s watching Real Housewives and drinking wine in a crummy hotel room, trying to work out how she got here.
When the Twin Towers collapsed, Gigi Stanislawski fled her office building and escaped lower Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. Among the crying, ash-covered and shoeless passengers, Gigi, unbelievably, found someone she recognised – the guy with pink socks and a British accent – from the coffee shop across from her office. Together she and Harry Harrison make their way to her parents’ house where they watch the television replay the planes crashing for hours, and she waits for the phone call from her younger brother that never comes. And after Harry has shared the worst day of her life, it’s time for him to leave.
Ten years later, Gigi, now a single mother consumed with bills and unfulfilled ambitions, bumps into Harry again and this time they fall deeply in love. When they move to London it feels like a chance for the happy ending she never dared to imagine. But it also highlights the differences in their class and cultures, which was something they laughed about until it wasn’t funny anymore; until the traumatic birth of their baby leaves Gigi raw and desperately missing her best friends and her old life in New York.
As Gigi grieves for her brother and rages at the unspoken pain of motherhood, she realises she must somehow find a way back – not to the woman she was but to the woman she wants to be.
An unforgettable novel about love – for our partners, our children, our mothers, and ourselves – pushed to its outer limits.
This is a very well-written, smart, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreakingly sad novel with a very likeable and relatable main character.
My children are adults now but I remember clearly that being at home alone with babies could often be lonely and boring and was absolutely exhausting. It’s still taboo to say so, even more so now, I feel, with these ‘influencer’ mums who are always immaculate (and so are their homes). So honesty like this is always refreshing. I would have loved to have read this when my children were little.
The characterisation is fabulous, and very well-observed. There are some wonderful observations of middle-class life here, and how it feels to not really fit in. There’s an understanding too of how past events continue to have ramifications on our emotions, our choices, our lives, however long ago they happened.
Recommended.
Alison Williams Writing 