By way of parable she told the story of her own family, of her stepmother. Because if I were to marry Joe, I’d be a stepmother too. It was a story she recounted often, with only minor variations in fact and tone, but the take-away? What she was actually telling me? This is how we love.
I have long loved the writing of Lisa Moore — from how she captures truth on a large scale (the captivating day-to-day reality of living in St. John’s, Newfoundland) to truth on the personal scale (the absolute reality of the human heart in all its familiar variety) — and This Is How We Love did not disappoint. The story begins with devastation — Jules and her husband Joe were in Mexico when they learned that their son had been viciously attacked at a party back home — and in chapters that rotate through various characters’ perspectives (always from Jules’ first person POV and third person when focussing on another), Moore skillfully relates stories from across the generations that explain who these people are, what forces made them, and how they got to now. Exploring a wide range of family types, Moore asks just what makes a family, what do we owe to one another, and can we ever step off the path childhood circumstances laid down for us. The overall plot is compelling, the writing is technically masterful as the timeline jumps around, threads dangle and get tied up, and small moments frequently dazzle with their clarity and relatability; I loved everything about this. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
He didn’t see the knife. The knife came when he was being kicked in the head. He saw the boot coming and confused the sensation of the knife with the kick to his skull. There was a synaptic misfire and he felt the knife slide through his skull. But it had punctured his jeans and skin and maybe organs and wasn’t anywhere near his head. It went deep. He could hardly believe it happened twice but at the same time he believed it.
Twenty-one-year old Xavier — “Xay”, “the antic anti-hero”, “the one with the big HaHa” — was raised by loving, stable parents but took that fact for granted until he found himself beaten, stabbed, and left to bleed out on a snowbank in the middle of the night. Maybe it was the thrice-knock of fate, a “wall of doom”, a long ago curse from the Woman with a Yellow Hat, but as he waits for an ambulance that’s a long time coming, Xavier has an opportunity to wonder at the strength of childhood ties that he thought had been thrown off. Meanwhile, Jules learns of the attack hours later, and with the Storm of the Century, a veritable Snowmageddon, heading for St. John’s, she will get on the last flight to Newfoundland before the snow hits (husband Joe will be trapped in Montreal waiting for flights to resume), and alone at her son’s hospital bedside, hoping for his eyes to open, Jules will have long hours to remember the stories about love and family and friendship that brought them here.
She meant I should pay attention if I wanted something and I’d have to act and that it wouldn’t be easy. Of course, she was right. Because this is a story about my son and how he was stabbed at a party and beaten by a handful of monsters and how nobody chooses yearning, it chooses you.
There are many types of motherhood described here — teenage single mothers and foster mothers, same sex and stepmothers — and despite love and intention, it’s a crapshoot how the kids will turn out; few mothers get the chance to actually stand between their children and the knives that are thrust towards them. And on the other hand, what chance in life has the little girl — neglected by her Mom and put into care — who learns early to close her heart to yearning? And what chance has the drug-dealing son of a gun-toting drug dealer who has never been shown love? What chance does Xavier have to survive injury and infection, even as his mother breaks a stay-at-home order to trudge a path through roof-high snowdrifts and make her way to a locked-down hospital? These are the questions that keep us reading.
I felt it was me. I was generating the storm, making it happen with my rage. The rage was as big as the storm, just as malevolent, tearing out of my chest. Or the storm had entered me. It was inside me, freezing everything, starting with my womb, which was frozen, breaking up like an iceberg, pieces sliding off. It was my womb or my heart, or the balancing fluid in my inner ear. I’d lost any sense of balance. The cold crept through me.
I love Lisa Moore, and again, this did not disappoint in narrative, insightfulness, or craftsmanship.
