This Is How It Always Is (Frankel)

This Is How It Always Is 
Laurie Frankel, 2017
Flatiron
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250088550


Summary
This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family.

And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan.

And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Laurie Frankel lives in Seattle, Oregon, with her husband, son and border collie. Before writing fulltime, she taught college-level writing, literature and gender studies.

Her previous novel, The Atlas of Love, has been highly acclaimed: "This beautifully written debut offers something for everyone—humour, richly drawn characters, and a tender exploration of love, friendship, and food" - Los Angeles Times Magazine. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
A bold, honest, heartbreaking story about the choices parents make, and how life goes on, but not always according to plan. This must-read novel… is the perfect pick for book clubs.
PopSugar


One of the most timely and big-hearted family stories I have read in a long time…This is a beautiful novel about the unexpected curve balls of parent and sibling relationships, and the limitless boundaries of family love.
Bustle


(Starred review.) Frankel's slightly askew voice, exemplified by Rosie and Penn's nontraditional gender roles, keeps the narrative sharp and surprising. This is a wonderfully contradictory story—heartwarming and generous, yet written with a wry sensibility.
Publishers Weekly


This novel offers a timely and thoughtful look at the life of a transgender child. It is also a touching and sympathetic account that is brimming with life and hard to put down. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [T]he challenges of raising a transgender child.... Though well-plotted, well-researched, and unflaggingly interesting, the novel is cloying at times, with arch formulations, preachy pronouncements.... [Still, as] thought-provoking a domestic novel as we have seen this year.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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