Count the Ways- Blog Tour
Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family.
Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.
Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours.
A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.
I really enjoyed this book and think the author did an amazing job of ensuring the protagonist character was well developed and not got lost in the plot or become mundane.
Whilst reading the book, I felt like I really got to know Eleanor. I went on her journey and the milestones in her life and the hardship she had to endure that have moulded her from childhood to an adult. I felt so empathetic towards her especially when you read about her drunken parents and their chaotic and abusive behaviours till she looses them in an accident. Her lonely years as a teenager and the emotional turmoil she goes through, to then being an adult; buying her house, getting married and having her children. However life continues to throw spikes at poor Eleanor even though she had success in books, she almost loses a child, another one goes through an identity confusion and then the downhill of her marriage due to lack of trust, and betrayal. I just wanted Eleanor to thrive and it pulled at my heart strings as she struggled through life.
There are lots of things happening in this book, including some mini plots but the author did a good job of making it make sense to the story line and not becoming overwhelmed. Eleanor character showed lots of resilience even when you thought she would break she continued to move forward and adapt and change. Could this have been her trauma response from when she was a child and her relationship with her parents that has given her this survival mode as an adult.
My first read from Joyce Maynard and it was brilliant, Need to explore more of her books. Any recommendations of what to read next are welcome!
I loved Labor Day, perhaps try that one next?
ReplyDeleteThank You for the recommendation. Ill try that one next :)
DeleteYou're welcome. Thank you for letting me join
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