This is a book that could have been a five-star read for me had I read it at a time when I was more able to immerse myself in it emotionally and intellectually. In fact, I knew basically nothing about the book going into it other than that it had been chosen as the January book for the Get Lit with All of It book club, and I enjoy following along with the NYPL loan system. 

That being said, I had no idea I was heading in to a pandemic book, and I was struck by the lack of explicit mention of the pandemic, which was, I suppose, aided by the structural decision to drop into the story for a snapshot of a single day over the span of the year. I enjoyed the sense of fleetingness and the shifting perspectives, though I found some elements confusing (perhaps especially because of the narrator’s limited repertoire of voices). 

The intertwining relationships between the characters is almost Love, Actually-esque, and I loved seeing how this family overlaps and engages with each other, even if there were relationships I definitely wasn’t following completely.

This is a quiet book that deserves to be read with full intention and perhaps may have been a better read for a single sitting and on paper rather than audio .