Review by Booklist Review
Maynard returns to the family at the center of Count the Ways (2021). More than 20 years after the near-drowning that left youngest son Toby with a brain injury and led to her divorce from Cam, Eleanor finds herself moving back to care for her ex following his cancer diagnosis. Over the next decade (and almost 200 bite-sized chapters), Eleanor embarks on a long-distance affair with a sidelined polar explorer, attempts to repair her relationships with her older son and daughter, and struggles to come to terms with the consequences of Toby's accident. Along the way, her family, friends, and neighbors experience opioid addiction, cancer, a bone-marrow transplant, a Trump-supporting son-in-law who flirts with fascism on January 6, COVID-19, and an attempted school shooting. Underlying these dramatic events is Eleanor's hard-won realization that grief over Toby's struggles has kept her from appreciating who he has become and the life their family has had. Though Maynard's references to Toby as "brain damaged" are troubling, many readers will appreciate this sweeping and heart-wrenching family story in the mode of Elizabeth Berg and Anna Quindlen.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Maynard continues the story of Eleanor, the resilient New Hampshire matriarch featured in 2020's Count the Ways, with this heartwarming chronicle of a woman coping with changes in her life and in the country. Eleanor is estranged from her 30-something daughter, Ursula, who blames her mother for the breakup of their once tight-knit family, though it was Cam, Eleanor's ex-husband, who left her for their babysitter, Coco. Eleanor's son, Toby, who sustained brain damage in a childhood accident, tends goats on Eleanor's farm and is generally well-liked by their neighbors, but after Donald Trump enters the presidential race in 2016, Eleanor senses a new mean-spiritedness around town, which she blames in part for Coco wrongly accusing Toby of molesting children. After Ursula develops long Covid, Eleanor takes care of her two children, who are in high school and middle school. Later, Eleanor finds romance with a climate activist, her first serious relationship with a man for many years, and she considers how much she's sacrificed over the years by putting her family first. Maynard's punchy chapters highlight pivotal moments in her characters' lives, and she holds readers' interest by showing how their relationships evolve. The author's fans will be pleased. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The long second act of a New England writer's life, rich in family, laced with troubles personal and public. Maynard's 18th book is a stirring, satisfying sequel to Count the Ways (2021), continuing the story of New England children's book author Eleanor through the years 2010 to 2024, including the Trump election, Covid-19, the Jan. 6 insurrection, school shootings, and lots and lots of great American music playing in the background. The book's title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, and John Prine, who died of Covid in 2020, presides over the story. As the author puts it in a note, "I never met him, but in these pages, I honor his musical legacy of humor, wisdom, passion, and tenderness." As in all Maynard's best work, those qualities are in evidence throughout. A prologue recaps an event central to the first book--an accident that resulted in a brain injury to Eleanor's youngest child, in the wake of which Eleanor's marriage to Cam slowly but surely crumbled. In Part 1, called The Death of Cam, the babysitter he left her for is history, and when Cam falls ill, none of their other children is available to care for him and their brain-damaged brother, so Eleanor moves back from Brookline to the family farm to do the job. Oldest child Al lives on the West Coast and is now fully transitioned, married to a woman, enjoying career success, and hoping to adopt. Middle child Ursula is a mother of three, lives in Vermont, and is married to a high school friend named Jake who morphs into a scary Proud Boy--type in the Trump years. Ursula is deeply estranged from her mother and treats her cruelly; one of the numerous plot threads traces the evolution of this painful situation. Others follow Eleanor's jet-setting romance with a famous climate change warrior; various projects to commercialize and Hollywood-ize her books; a sexual abuse scandal; and most centrally, this question: "A good mother. Who even knows what that is?" This ample narrative is arranged into tasty vignettes with appealing, sometimes funny subtitles, making it a pleasure to digest. Everything this great American author's fans are looking for. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
