Thanks to my sporadic blogging and my inability to review books (especially books I like), The House We Grew Up In is my first book by Lisa Jewell that I review - despite it not being my favourite and being different than the other books I read by her. I discovered this author in the beginning of the year and... well, I am slowly working my way through all of her books. Funny enough, I never actually read a Lisa Jewell book - only listened to the audiobooks - and that is because they are too addictive and I wouldn't be able to do anything else but read, but I gotta pay my bills, so audiobooks are the best solution.
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| ★★★★☆ |
"The human memory is such a cruel, frustrating thing, the way it just discards things without asking permission, precious things. At least here, in my house, I have control over my memories."
As I was saying, The House We Grew Up In is different from all the other Lisa Jewell novels I read, but also still keeps the same elements that make her novel addictive: multiple POVs of complex characters and an intriguing backstory, various plotlines, albeit without any crime element this time. But the drama is still there. And this is how I would describe her books: full of drama and hard to put down!
This book is about the Bird family: a hippy mum, a sweet dad, and their four children. The perspective jumps through time as we learn about their tragedies and try to pierce together details of their lives.
What Is a Normal Family?
The book's main theme revolves around the idea of family and relationships, but it also tackles mental health and parenting. And there are so many layers to the Bird family.
The book starts by painting a very nice picture of the Birds, an idyllic life, but after a tragic event that shatters the family bit by bit, we learn that even before the tragedy, life was not pinky and fluffy. At times I felt like shouting some sense into them, some other times I felt like all they needed was a good hug and just a shoulder to lean on.
It's very easy to judge a family as an outsider - they way they live might be different from yours, you might agree with some ideas, but totally see what's lacking in some other area. But as you read, you might be surprised how much you learn not just about the Birds, but also about yourself and your relationship with your family (I might be biased because I am working on this with my therapist, so maybe I have a few more tools to spot stuff and analyze them more in depth).
"This is the real world. We are real people. This is real life. And things sometimes happen that don’t fit in with how we think the story should go, but we just have to take a deep breath and get on with it, not sit there in the corner sulking because it’s not what we were hoping for."
Complex and Natural Characters
As with any Lisa Jewell novel, the characters are complex - there is no right or wrong way per se, they are people with good and bad (and ugly) parts.
The characters feel so real and natural. They are not personifications of values or ideas, they are complex and flawed and while you may not agree with all of them, by the end of the novel you at least understand them and their motives. It’s impossible not to feel empathy towards the Bird family members and their close friends.
This is definitely a character driven book and it's especially great if you like to over-analyze the human nature and make connections between what happened during the Bird kids childhood and how that changed each of them. And if we are talking nurture vs nature, the Bird kids grew up together, yet they each focused were affected by different parts of their childhood. I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed noticing these things.
"I know as well as you do that only the individual has the key to change themselves. It's buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we're the only ones who can use it."
Can Love Be Love and Abuse at the Same Time?
Don't be alarmed, this book is not about physical abuse of any kind, but there is more than that when it comes to abuse. It probably hit me harder because I am working with my therapist on how my relationship with my parents growing up affected me (maybe I will one day write more about this) and I recently learnt that sometimes love can be abusive, and it’s exactly what the Bird children went through: the subtle abuse of a loving parent, and then the difficulties of living with a hoarder.
"Like any challenge in life, once the mind was focused on the job in question, it became a simple matter of getting on with it, inch by inch, step by step."
Overall, it’s addictive and it’s a book about addiction that will definitely keep you at the edge of your seat! And if you like a soapy drama and character analysis, then this is right up your alley.
The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell was first published in 2013
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