From the very first page of We Are the Goldens, – when 15 year-old Nell starts describing her interconnectedness to her sister Layla, and talks about that peculiar, WRONG feeling that happens when you and your sister are mad at each other, I knew this book and I were going to get along. And we did, except that, also from that very first page, also from that very first description of something being ‘off’, the author manages to impart that same sense of discomfort and unease directly into the reader, and it never quite goes away. And for a person like me – who sometimes has to pause movies when a scene feels like it might be getting to awkward or heavy or emotionally wrought, and who sometimes has to put a book down and walk away for a few minutes because it’s starting to make her squirm – it definitely made the book a bit harder to stomach.
I spent entire chapters going “oh no” and internally cringing along with Nell. I found myself empathizing with her increasingly desperate subconscious (in its rather unique form), as she seesaw-ed between a need to acknowledge the bad decisions she sees her sister making and the need to stay close to her sister, which only seems possible if she ignores the things that are making her uncomfortable. Nell’s relationship with Layla is so complex and intertwined that I feel like they could ONLY be sisters – nobody else gets inside your head and heart that way, figures out your weak spots, plays you when they need to, bolsters you when you need them to.
And it’s not just their relationship that Reinhardt crafts so well – there’s a passage about being the daughter of divorced parents –
“It’s always suited them best to think of us as smart and mature young women with good sense who make good choices, so that they could wrap themselves up in their own lives and fall asleep a little on the job of being our parents. All these years, Layla, we’ve tried to make things easy on them. We go back and forth, back and forth, smart and mature, building a bridge between two lives and crossing it over and over again. I wanted to go to them, to tell them, to put them in charge, but I didn’t know how. I was afraid to cause that earthquake.”
– that just struck me as the bare truth for so many families: kids who play roles and hide who they really are from parents who think they’re doing all they can, and it made me panic a little bit, because I feel so strongly for Nell, but I’m also a grown-up now (ugh) and want to shake her parents and make them see that they have their own blind spots, to see that there are vulnerabilities within their family that have to be protected.
Then there are the boys: (Aren’t there always boys if it’s a book about a teenage girl’s life? The answer does not have to be yes, authors, just FYI), but thankfully, the boys in this book – specifically Nell’s longtime best friend Felix, and her Jiminy Crickets, the Creed brothers – kind of rock. As in, I would like a Felix of my very own, thank you.
The book is about the ways our family slots us into certain roles, and how we can struggle to live up (or down) to them; it’s about the chances we take and the ones we let pass us by; it’s about the lies we tell ourselves and each other, as just a routine part of growing up and figuring out how we relate to each other. And – from first page to last – it’s about sisters.
(My copy of the book was provided by Netgalley, free of charge for my honest opinion. Title quote is taken from the book.)