(4/14/2023)
This book by Laurie Frankel is a lot of contradictory things:
-- It's billed as a novel for grown-ups, but it should be shelved in the young adult section.
-- It's a riveting story, but it goes on far too long, spoiling something that started out really good.
-- I wanted to love it because "This Is How It Always Is," also by Laurie Frankel, is one of my favorite books of all time, but I just couldn't love it that much.
This is the story of three sisters, 16-year-old triplets Mab, Monday, and Mirabel. They call each other One, Two, and Three based on their birth order and the number of syllables in their names. This is also the story of their town, Bourne, where 17 years ago a chemical company poisoned the town's water and the residents. Many, many of them died, including the triplets' father, many got cancer, and most of the children were born with birth defects. While Mab is considered "normal," Monday is autistic, and Mirabel, while brilliant, was born physically deformed with only her right arm and hand fully functioning, leaving her unable to walk or talk. Why not move away? Their mother, Nora, is mad. So very, very angry. And she spends her life, when she's not caring for her daughters or working one of her three jobs, fighting the chemical company and seeking restitution for the little town of Bourne. It truly is her purpose in life.
Then, quite suddenly, everything changes in this place almost everyone else forgot about.
This is the story of what can go disastrously wrong when unscrupulous, uncaring people are in charge and then get away with it. It's well researched in terms of science and law, so the novel feels authentic. We're all rooting for the underdogs here, and while the ups and downs, the incessant legal wrangling, and evidence sleuthing are at first fascinating, it all just goes on way too long. What Frankel tries to do is build the story to a climax we'll never forget, but unfortunately the result falls flat like a balloon after all the air has leaked out—and it's only because it took too long to get there.
Still, this novel is very well-written, as well as imaginatively written, with each chapter titled "One, "Two," or "Three" and told from the point of view and in the distinct first-person voices of Mab, Monday, or Mirabel. It's a clever writing ploy, and it works really well. Unfortunately, it's just not enough to pull the story out of the mire into which it eventually sinks.
A lovely bonus: This book is a love letter to libraries and librarians, while it also gives a tip of the hat to vocabulary words learned well and used appropriately in conversation.