Tag: literary fiction

Book Review: The Biographies of Ordinary People, Vol.2 by Nicole Dieker

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The Biographies of Ordinary People, Vol.2About the Book

The Gruber sisters grow up in this second volume of The Biographies of Ordinary People, navigating jobs, friendships, and relationships in a constantly changing world.

The Biographies of Ordinary People is the story of the Gruber family: Rosemary and Jack, and their daughters Meredith, Natalie, and Jackie. The two-volume series begins in July 1989, on Rosemary’s thirty-fifth birthday; it ends in November 2016, on Meredith’s thirty-fifth birthday.

The second volume follows the three Gruber sisters as they each leave their rural Midwestern hometown and try to make their way in the larger world. Meredith is determined to pursue a career in the theatre. Natalie begins sorting and filing for an insurance company.  Jackie… well, Jackie still wants to sing, and if the classical music world isn’t interested in what she can do, she’ll figure out how to do it on her own.

Set against the Great Recession, Presidents Obama and Trump, and a growing sense of national unrest, this final volume explores Meredith’s question: is it possible for ordinary people to make art? It also takes us into the close emotional connections between mothers and daughters, sisters and friends, and the people we choose to love as adults.

Format: ebook (404 pp.)                Publisher:
Published: 22nd May 2018             Genre: Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Biographies of Ordinary People, Vol. 2 on Goodreads

My Review

The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2 follows directly on from Volume 1 and covers the period from 2004 to 2016.  Even the chapter numbers continue from the first volume.  This is definitely not a sequel (the author originally envisioned it as one book but it got too large) and you would be missing an awful lot – in so many ways – if you decided to read it without having read the first volume.  You can read my review of The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 here.

In the first volume, the reader was immersed in the domestic life of the Gruber family, following the three daughters – Meredith, Natalie and Jackie – through their school and teenage years.  In the second volume, the three girls are out in the world trying to achieve their career and life ambitions – in the fields of drama, business and music – but always mindful that they are ‘Gruber kids’.   ‘The Gruber way’, instilled by their parents Jack and Rosemary, is all about the importance of education, always trying to do your best, being courteous and polite, doing your homework, doing your piano practice, getting good grades.

The Biographies of Ordinary People does exactly what it says on the tin.  It’s brings us the daily life experiences of the Gruber girls.  The sort of things that happen to most people:  moving to a new town, hunting for an apartment, managing on a small budget, making new friends, returning home for family Christmas dinners, attending friends’ weddings, meeting your brother’s new girlfriend.  It also captures the emotional side of life: the uncertainties of growing up, relationship difficulties, exploring your sexuality.   Yes, the book has an episodic structure but isn’t life just really countless small episodes?

In this second volume, world events impinge a little more – from the election of President Obama to the election of President Trump.    And, where in the first volume, the Internet was a strange new thing, in this volume we get to see the emergence of technology such as email, text, Skype, AirBnB, YouTube, reminding the reader just how long some of these things have been around.    The reader sees slightly less of Jack and Rosemary who have their own adjustments to make now their daughters have left home and they are approaching retirement.  However, there are a couple of lovely scenes between them.

As in the first volume, out of the three sisters, I found myself most drawn to Meredith.  She’s ambitious, eager to learn, to be pushed and has an idealistic view of what college education can offer.  Her dream is to pursue a career in the theatre and write and direct successful stage musicals; that is the narrative of her life she has mapped out.  She confesses in her diary: ‘I wish there was a right path I could point myself towards and know it works out in the end, as long as I keep aiming in that direction.’  However, Meredith finds that life can’t be lived as if in a book.  Visiting her childhood friend Alex, now married and with a child, she reflects: ‘Alex – Meredith looked at her, wanting to ask and not guess, but guessing instead – was living a different book.  Maybe not a book at all; maybe Alex was just living, without trying to measure herself against a narrative.’  Eventually all three girls find fulfilment in slightly different ways, not necessarily in the way they would have expected when they were younger.  But, hey, that’s life, isn’t it?

If you’re looking for a story with shipwrecks, visitors from outer space, dragons, or gruesome murders, this is not the book for you.  The Biographies of Ordinary People gives the reader an absorbing and intimate insight into the lives of its characters.  The author’s chief achievement is to make the characters seem absolutely real and credible.  You feel you could be sitting next to one of the Gruber girls on a bus or train, get chatting to them in a bookstore, come across their blog or vlog online or meet them at a conference or event.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of the author and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Authentic, insightful, heart-warming

Try something similar…Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (in homage to Meredith’s visit to Orchard House)

ANicoleDiekerbout the Author

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer, a senior editor at The Billfold, and the host of the Writing & Money podcast. Her work has appeared in Boing Boing, Popular Science, Scratch, SparkLife, The Freelancer, The Toast, and numerous other publications. The Biographies of Ordinary People is her debut novel, if you don’t count the speculative fiction epic she wrote when she was in high school.

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Throwback Thursday: The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 by Nicole Dieker

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed in December last year – The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 by Nicole Dieker.  Published in May 2017, The Biographies of Ordinary People is a two volume series about the fictional Gruber family that’s been described as a millennial era Little Women.  It covers the period from July 1989 to November 2016, with volume one focusing on the years 1989 to 2000.

I’m delighted to say that the second volume, covering the years 2004 to 2016, is due to be published on 22nd May 2018.  The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2 is available for pre-order from Amazon.  Watch out for my review of volume two next week.

TheBiographiesofOrdinaryPeopleAbout the Book

The Biographies of Ordinary People is the story of the Gruber family: Rosemary and Jack, and their daughters Meredith, Natalie, and Jackie. The two-volume series begins in July 1989, on Rosemary’s thirty-fifth birthday; it ends in November 2016, on Meredith’s thirty-fifth birthday.  When the Grubers move to a small Midwestern town so Jack can teach music at a local college, each family member has an idea of who they might become. Jack wants to foster intellectual curiosity in his students. Rosemary wants to be “the most important person in her own life for the length of an afternoon.” Meredith wants to model herself after the girls she’s read about in books: Betsy Ray, Pauline Fossil, Jo March. Natalie wants to figure out how she’s different from her sisters—and Jackie, the youngest, wants to sing.  Set against the past thirty years of social and cultural changes, this story of family, friendship, and artistic ambition takes us into intimately familiar experiences: putting on a play, falling out with a best friend, getting dial-up internet for the first time. Drinking sparkling wine out of a paper cup on December 31, 1999 and wondering what will happen next.

Format: ebook (435 pp.)                Publisher:
Published: 23rd May 2017            Genre: Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  | Barnes and Noble
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 and The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2 on Goodreads

My Review

In her guest post published on my blog in July 2017 (click here to read it), Nicole talked about her inspiration for The Biographies of Ordinary People and her reason for focussing on the lives of just one family.  She illustrated this with a quote from volume two in which Meredith asks:

“There are all these biographies of famous people and how they lived their lives, but most of us aren’t going to be famous. It’s like we’ve gotten these models for life that aren’t applicable…We’ve learned about all of these well-known artists and how they did their work, but we don’t ever study how the rest of us do it. Where are the biographies of ordinary people?”

The Biographies of Ordinary People has been described as, ‘a millennial-era Little Women’ but don’t think that this means it is at all sentimental, preachy or twee (not that I’m suggesting Little Women deserves those descriptions either).  I saw a one-star review that said (summarising) “not much happens” and feel that the reviewer missed the point of the book really.  Yes, there are no dramatic events like murders, violent deaths, family break-ups, etc. but then those things are not a feature of normal family life for most of us, unless you’re really unlucky.

Things do happen in The Biographies of Ordinary People but they’re the things that make up everyday domestic life and reflect the experience of most of us growing up: making up games for entertainment on car journeys, starting school, making new friends, moving to a new town, going to the swimming pool, visiting the video store, attending your first prom.  In the case of the Gruber girls, their experiences also reflect the period covered by the book so it’s videos not DVDs or streaming, video games not apps on your phone.  There are also the sad events that unfortunately occur in any family over time.

Meredith is the character that resonated most strongly with me.  She’s clever, thoughtful, bookish, protective towards her younger sister, competitive but perhaps over-absorbed by the desire to get things right and, in this respect, can come across as mature beyond her years.  At one point she muses, “I wonder if I am good at anything that I haven’t practiced”.  Meredith seems absolutely real as a character with the good points and flaws that make up all humans and I think this is the author’s chief accomplishment that in this book she has created truly realistic characters that you feel you could meet in the street or the local shop.

I found the Gruber parents – Rosemary and Jack – really interesting although not altogether likeable.  They seem so careful and controlled in their parenting and in bringing up their girls so that this carefulness becomes ingrained in Meredith, in particular.  In fact, at the town’s annual Easter Egg Hunt, Rosemary does seem to recognise this.

‘Rosemary often didn’t know how to feel about her daughter; certainly there was a sense of pride and love and accomplishment in the idea that she had raised a child who would hold back, whose sharp, smart eyes would case the room for eggs and then help her younger sisters find them.  But she also felt a little sad, watching this, because she saw her daughter growing up and doing exactly what she and Jack had taught her, think before you speak and before you act – and she worried that Meredith thought too much.’

I really liked the contrast made with the arrangements in the household of Meredith’s best friend, Alex.

‘[Meredith] had never known anyone like Alex, who walked down the sidewalks saying hello to everyone, who climbed up on a library stepstool without asking, who ran towards her father every evening shouting “Daddy, daddy, daddy!”  Mike MacAllister was big and red-headed and he would lift Alex off the ground or tousle her tangled hair.  When Meredith went back to her own home she said “Hello” and whichever parent was in the living room said “Hello” and asked how her visit had been…’

‘That was one of the reasons Meredith and Alex were best friends.  They talked, in Alex’s bedroom, about the Gruber way and the MacAllister way.’

I received a review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.   I really enjoyed the first volume of The Biographies of Ordinary People and I’m looking forward to reading the second volume covering the years 2004 to 2016 and seeing what life has in store for Meredith, her siblings and friends.

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In three words: Intimate, realistic, engaging

NicoleDiekerAbout the Author

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer, a senior editor at The Billfold, and a columnist at The Write Life. Her work has appeared in Boing Boing, Popular Science, Scratch, SparkLife, The Freelancer, The Toast, and numerous other publications. The Biographies of Ordinary People is her debut novel, if you don’t count the speculative fiction epic she wrote when she was in high school.

Connect with Nicole

Website ǀ   Twitter  ǀ Instagram |  Goodreads