Im Sorry You Feel That Way

 By: Rebecca Watt

Location: FIC WAI

Genre: Fiction, Literary Fiction

I just went to the UK and I LOVE Waterstones Bookshops!!!!

So if they do a book on the month- Im in!

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.

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 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.

Well, this is a gem. A gorgeous story about a dysfunctional family and the thread of mental illness running through it, this book is warm, funny and unflinching.

Celia has three children, Alice who lacks self-confidence but is ceaselessly kind and wants to do right by everyone, her twin Hanna who is strong-willed and fiercely bright, and their older brother Michael who is fixated on owning property and disapproves of the girls failing to get their shit together, for want of a better expression 🙃. Celia is a piece of work - neurotic, uptight, painfully socially awkward and a victim of her own upbringing.

The book explores the fractured relationships between the family and how they go about trying to repair them, the impact mental illness has on the whole family, and the way in which the baggage of a difficult childhood stays with you for life.

I loved this one. A really well-written story that I wanted to return to, characters that were so well-drawn and leapt off the page, and dialogue that made me laugh throughout (Hanna is a brilliant character). Review of Goodreads