Book Review: The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

After finishing the book WAY past my bedtime last night, my initial gut reaction was to give it a 5 star Goodreads review. After sleeping on it, I’m taking one of those stars back. 

I’ll admit that I am very easily dazzled by an author’s adept use of language, and after listening to a few audiobook chapters, I drove myself to the public library to request a physical copy. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait too long, and I did appreciate getting to “see” Lombardo’s writing on the printed page and copy some examples of seriously good prose into my regrettably-underutilized commonplace journal.  While I’m tempted to share some samples here, I’m not sure they land well without some necessary context. 

So  just take my word for it. 

Shaving off maybe another quarter star is an annoying character trait that Lombardo gives almost everyone with a speaking role– the inability to finish their sentences. It happens often  in some of the longer, more emotional dialogues…and there were many angsty moments.  Now don’t get me wrong– I’m also  sometimes  guilty of em dash abuse. Nevertheless, I found it to be mildly distracting. 

I do not want to turn off curious potential readers. Truly my beige flag is that I read almost everything as potential for adoption into the AP Literature canon. Most casual readers are not so “extra,” and nor should they be. 

Simply stated, The Most Fun We Ever Had examines one family’s joy and pain, ultimately revealing how these opposing forces shape and redefine their relationships. Protagonists Marilyn and David Sorenson are a (relatively) happily-married Boomer supercouple who raised four characterically-different daughters, none of whom seem to have grown into happy adults. 

Pedestrian? Maybe a little. But I would also argue that, depending on your background and where your own family falls on the “dysfunctional” spectrum, some of the Sorensons might feel a bit relatable, if not endearing. More on that later…

Front to finish, the story of Marilyn and David’s courtship and marriage; and therefore the novel’s plot, spans nearly fifty years. It advances in a somewhat chaotic structure of chapters alternating not just between past and present, but also with shifting narrative points-of-view. Maybe this plot structure is intended to highlight the cacophony of the family structure, or maybe it’s just sloppy… it’s a little hard to tell. Either way, it works. 

The story begins in media res with eldest daughter Wendy Sorenson’s wedding. We are meant to know— unless we deliberately avoid reading the jacket notes— that Wendy’s husband will die young. Sixteen years later, in the novel’s “present day,” Wendy is a promiscuous functional alcoholic giving Beth Dutton vibes (IYKYK). Reading on, we learn that the untimely death of Wendy’s husband is not the sole source of her misery. She was born with it. In fact, no matter where we are in the timeline of the Sorenson saga, there’s likely some of Wendy’s drama at the forefront– or at least  gently simmering in the background. Wendy’s interpersonal conflicts with her mother and sister Violet, Wendy’s so-called “Irish twin,” are meant to contribute significantly to the story.

I say “meant to” because I do think that Lombardo’s character development leaves something to be desired. Each of Marilyn and David Sorenson’s four daughters exist as main characters in their own tiny subplots. All interesting, but all undercooked. If I was to be unjustly critical of a book obviously meant to be consumed and enjoyed for what it is, I would say that Claire Lombardo misses the opportunity to address mental illness with the depth that it might deserve. 

And then there’s a wildcard character, David and Marilyn’s long-lost grandson Jonah, who shows up on the precipice of turning 16. How he comes into the picture is something I do not intend to disclose  here, but the revelation of his origin story is well-executed (and necessitated a re-read of Chapter 1 to pick up on a bit of foreshadowing that I nearly missed). 

All told, I give Claire Lombardo’s literary debut somewhere between 3.75 - 4 stars on the Goodreads scale. It’s not brain candy; it’s not profound. It’s somewhere, blessedly, in the middle. 

… Now someone get Reese Witherspoon and HBO on a conference call.