Title: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way
Author: Rebecca Wait
Pages: 380 Pages
Publisher: Quercus Books
The Blurb
For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial. There is their mother, who takes a divide-and-conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is also their older brother Michael, whose disapproval is a force to be reckoned with.
There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything . . .
As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with disappointments in work and in love as well as increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they’d intended. They must look for a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.
From the author of the Waterstones Book of the Month Our Fathers comes a compelling domestic comedy about complex family dynamics, mental health and the intricacies of sibling relationships.
The Review
Family dynamics are always fascinating. I look at my own family and I have to laugh at who talks to who, who doesn’t talk to who, who the black sheep are (yes are, it’s a big family) and who has these annoying foibles that we just let be. Every family has a dynamic that is unique to them. This is the crux of Rebecca Wait’s I’m Sorry You Feel That Way. It is about the nuances that all families have and how they can impact you on a daily basis.
The dynamics for Alice and Hanna parallel their mothers relationship with her sister and overall the matriarch seems to filter down her “special ways” which impact the rest of the family. It is such an interesting story, especially with the multi generational perspective.
I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy I’m Sorry You Feel That Way as much as I did. This one will linger with me for a while.
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait is available now.
For more information regarding Quercus (@QuercusBooks) please visit www.quercusbooks.co.uk.
