This Is How It Always Is

Starred review from November 28, 2016
Frankel's third novel is about the large, rambunctious
Walsh-Adams family. While Penn writes his "DN" (damn novel) and spins fractured fairy tales from the family's ramshackle
farmhouse in Madison, Wis., Rosie works as an emergency physician. Four sons have made the happily married couple exhausted and wanting a daughter; alas, their fifth is another boy. Extraordinarily verbal little Claude is quirky and clever, traits that run in the family, and at age three says, "I want to be a girl." Claude is the focus, but Frankel captures the older brothers' boyish grossness. She also fleshes out his two eldest brothers, who worry about Claude's safety when Rosie and Penn agree that Claude can be Poppy at school. But coming out further isolates this unique child. Encouragement from a therapist and an accepting grandma can go just so far; Poppy only blossoms after the Walsh-Adamses move to progressive Seattle and keep her trans status private, although what is good for Poppy is increasingly difficult on her brothers. The story takes a darker turn when she is outed; Rosie and her youngest must find their footing while Penn stays at home
with the other kids. Frankel's (The Atlas of Love) slightly askew voice, exemplified by Rosie and Penn's nontraditional gender roles, keeps the narrative sharp and surprising. This is a
wonderfully contradictory storyâheartwarming and generous, yet written with a wry sensibility. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Literary Agency.

May 15, 2017

Frankel's third novel is her most personal: as the mother of a transgender daughter, she writes what she knows with clarity, truth, and heart. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when Claude arrives. A remarkable child by all accounts, by age three, Claude announces he wants to be a girl when he grows up. Cautious at first, the family creates a loving, nurturing world as Claude becomes Poppy. After Rosie treats a horrifically battered young trans woman in the ER one night, her fear for Poppy's future results in uprooting the family from Wisconsin to liberal Seattle. But even in the most accepting environments, living with secrets has challenges and consequences impossible to ignore. Narrator Gabra Zackman superbly endows each family member with distinctive personalities, but her characterization of Poppy--her curiosity, joy, devastation, resolve--is especially affecting. Zackman is also memorable as Poppy's unwaveringly supportive, no-nonsense grandmother and as "therapist-magician" Mr. Tonga, who proves to be the family's best cheerleader and realist both. VERDICT With transgender rights making regular headlines, all libraries would do well to enable Frankel's latest to show listeners how it always is--and should be--in families and communities everywhere. ["A touching and sympathetic account that is brimming with life and hard to put down": LJ 1/17 review of the Flatiron: Macmillan hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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