Fuel for Obsession: A Guest Post by Claire Lombardo
A poignant story of family, marriage and the tricky bits of life, Same As It Ever Was is a novel Claire Lombardo knew she wanted to write — even before finishing her debut. Discover how she found herself drawn to this unique story and its dynamic characters in her exclusive guest post, down below.
Hardcover $30.00
Same As It Ever Was: A Novel
Same As It Ever Was: A Novel
In Stock Online
Hardcover $30.00
Sure, marriage is hard, but it makes for great reading. Lombardo is a joy to read — especially when your own family starts to stress you out.
Sure, marriage is hard, but it makes for great reading. Lombardo is a joy to read — especially when your own family starts to stress you out.
I found Julia Ames—the protagonist of my new novel, SAME AS IT EVER WAS—about eight years ago, while procrastinating from finishing my debut, THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD. I had in my mind the image of a young mother in a botanic garden, openly weeping into a fancy silk scarf passed to her by a compassionate stranger. I knew little of the character beyond this moment, but she had what I’m constantly on the hunt for when I’m writing, the ineffable thing we’re all happy to find in other people, fictional or otherwise—chemistry, energy, fuel for obsession.
My nosiness has always been one of the most forceful driving factors of my writing. I’m endlessly fascinated by the trappings of my characters, material and mental, and their behavior—the worse the better—will undoubtedly yield plot. Julia, a master of bad behavior and self-sabotage, did not disappoint, and her story continued to grow for me; over subsequent years, I looked at her life from every angle I could find, I became conversant in her family dynamics and the most pivotal moments of her childhood and the thoughts that kept her up at night.
When we meet Julia at the beginning of the novel, she’s married to a congenitally kind man, the mother of two ostensibly grown children. She has a life that appears contented and charmed, but it fails to hold up under scrutiny: a few things go wrong and Julia starts to spiral; we see just how fragile and how hard-won her happiness really is.
She isn’t unique in this respect—I think we’re all, perhaps especially lately, hanging on by a thread more than we present outwardly. But she does move through the world with a great deal less ease than most people, and this was one of the things I found the most compelling while I was initially finding the character. Julia doesn’t feel things the way most of the rest of us do, and when she can identify her feelings, she’s slow to trust them.
SAME AS IT EVER WAS shares some of the preoccupations of my first novel: it’s the story of a long and strong marriage; it’s about parental and romantic love and how those things both enhance each other and vie for prominence; it’s about the ways in which we’re shaped and defined by our formative years, for better or worse.
It’s also a story of intergenerational female friendship, of inherited trauma, of maternal ambivalence. And it’s a novel about the roles of women, roles we choose or eschew, and how we’re societally defined by and made to feel about those choices.
At its core, though, SAME AS IT EVER WAS is the story of Julia’s life from start to finish—and I hope you’ll find her as compelling as I do, complicated, contrarian Julia who nevertheless desires things that I think all of us are looking to find, or to keep: contentment, the understanding of those closest to us, and, ultimately, love, in any of its many forms.
