This book revolves around the Oppenheimer's, a wealthy Jewish family in NYC. We learn about the parents, Johanna and Salo, how they met and their beginning relationship. Johanna is desperate to be a mother and has a fantasy of how that will look. However, they struggle with infertility and eventually require the new in vitro fertilization to get pregnant - and with triplets! Johanna has the fantasy that these three babies will be extremely close and cause their family to become close. But fantasy and reality never quite mesh. We follow this family through the decades as the triplets grow old and eventually leave and through Johanna's decision to try her fantasy family again by using the last frozen embryo and a surrogate. It's this latecomer, Phoebe, who tries to pull the family together.
Told through multiple points of view, this was a slow burn of a character study but intriguing enough that I couldn't put it down. While not many of these characters are endearing, it was so interesting to see how these family dynamics played out. This would be a good book club pick with so many topics - infidelity, secrets, grief, racism, sexual identity - the list goes on! In the vein of The Plot, this requires some time to settle in with these characters and the wonderful writing but it's well worth it!
Told through multiple points of view, this was a slow burn of a character study but intriguing enough that I couldn't put it down. While not many of these characters are endearing, it was so interesting to see how these family dynamics played out. This would be a good book club pick with so many topics - infidelity, secrets, grief, racism, sexual identity - the list goes on! In the vein of The Plot, this requires some time to settle in with these characters and the wonderful writing but it's well worth it!