Book Review - The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

Just get everything by Lisa Jewell and read it. Her families are awfully tangled and they deal with real life events, getting hurt and broken and not always knowing how to heal or forgive themselves, let alone other family members. Lorelei spends her life in a bubble of hippy-ish creativity and avoidance of the hurts and dramas her husband and children go through. Keeping her own hurt at bay with excessive hoarding, for example, she clings on to a broken kettle because it went bang on a happy family day, or to packets of nappies when there are no babies who need them because she was thinking happy possible future baby thoughts about possible babies when she bought them and to give them away denies that bright future she saw. Her family try but cannot get through to her and in the meantime they are out in the world, trying to make sense of their own lives. How they negotiate life and love, how much they can give and how much they can receive support from others, family or not, is all part of the story Wendy