CBR15 Passport Challenge: New to you authors #1
Chrysta and her sister are the daughters of a dynamic and damaged woman, a single lesbian who yearned for a child in the rather unaccepting 1980s – and found her ideal sperm donor in a hair salon. But both Debra and Jeffrey hid many secrets from their children.
There’s that oft-quoted opening sentence of Anna Karenina – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I thought of that quote, and how it’s subverted in this book. The author has a very unusual family, as we come to learn in the opening pages, but the focus stays on a far more relatable core. For the most part the book focuses on Bilton’s insecure childhood and her complex relationship with her parents.
The writing is simple but evocative, and places you on the spot with Chrysta and her sister throughout their turbulent lives. Both Debra and Jeffrey are larger-than-life, off-beat figures, and it was interesting to see the way Chrysta’s understanding of them morphs and broadens as she grows up. I liked that the headline-grabbing aspect of the story, the unexpected discovery of her multitude of siblings, is rolled into the greater story of the author coming to accept her childhood and her family.
However, I did think the story was a little spotty at times, as we hop around from place to place and from troubling or bizarre incident to troubling or bizarre incident. I also wished that we delved more into what shaped Debra and Jeffrey into becoming the people that they were. For a book that engages so heavily with the concept of generational trauma, I felt that we did not necessarily learn as much as I wished about what made Bilton’s parents the people that raised her.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.