Sometimes in life we are forced into a closeness with a stranger who becomes part of the family. The arrangement isn’t always easy to negotiate.
In Marisa Silver’s latest novel, At Last, Helene Simonauer and Evelyn Turner are two women whose children marry. They have a granddaughter, Francie, in common.
They become bound together by this simple fact—their children marry and have a child. The two grandmothers will be connected for the rest of their lives.
In chapters with alternating narrators, we learn all about them. We learn about Helene who became an only child after losing a brother and a sister. She marries an older man—a doctor who has also known tragedy in his life. The one thing Helene has is her only child, Tom.
Evelyn’s had a hardscrabble life. And we learn about the details of the struggle she has known for most of her life. She is someone who has mostly lost a sense of illusion. But this kind of hardness hides a vulnerability that we come to understand, too.
We follow all these lives and get to know the character of Francie, too.
The novel covers many decades and eras of these lives. We follow them easily and eagerly.
What does it mean to be connected to someone because you have to be—and have no choice?
Where do we find meaning in this kind of kinship?
The women in this novel represent many diverse ideas about what it means to be a woman, what it means to carry the stories of our mothers and grandmothers and daughters, about what we owe to each other, and what we deserve and expect for ourselves through it all.
Guest: Marisa Silver is the author of At Last.
Read more about the author here.
