We Are Not Ourselves
Matthew Thomas, 2014
640 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
February, 2015
The heroine of We Are Not Ourselves is tough and tough to like. But we're riveted by her character: her strength and clarity of mind and purpose fascinate us—so much so that Eileen Tumulty could well go down as one of modern fiction's most memorable heroines.

The 1950s finds Eileen growing up in the working class borough of Queens, New York. When she meets Ed Leary, a brilliant young research chemist, she marries him with the expectation that he will propel her into the well-heeled life she desires. But Ed has other ideas about the course of his life—ideas that don't involve upper-class pretensions.

If Thomas's novel were simply a story of thwarted social climbing, we could quit here. But as the years go by, Eileen's life and desires track powerful changes in the urban society around her: the rising aspirations of the working class, the flight to the suburbs, and the influx of new immigrants into New York neighborhoods, all with their own aspirations for the American Dream.

Despite Eileen's fretting, she and Ed remain in Queens, prospering over the years in their mutual work, even as Ed turns down prestigious job offers. Those refusals make us wonder whether Ed is acting on principle, as he claims, or whether something else holds him back—passivity, lack of imagination, even fear? Whatever it is, the couple's stasis leads to a sense of claustrophobia on Eileen's part:

She had achieved professional status, but her existence wasn't ideal, and hard as she tried to hack her way through the thicket of middle-class living, she couldn't find a way out to the clearing.

Eileen decides that, if she can't prod her husband forward, she will at least get behind her son Connell and push him toward success.

Eventually, a darkness descends on the Leary family severely testing their love for one another. No plot spoilers here, but suffice it to say that the three—Eileen, Ed, and now Connell—struggle to hold onto their sense of themselves. Each of them is forced to learn what matters most.

Gorgeously written, full of moments of penetrating insight and richly developed characters, We Are Not Ourselves was hailed as one of the top books in 2014—and for good reason. A must read.

See our Reading Guide for We Are Not Ourselves.