Pandora Ogg

Review: This Is How It Always Is

REVIEW: This Is How It Always Is by Laurel Frankel This is a stunning novel by Laurie Frankel, depicting the transition of the youngest in a family of five children, from Claude to Poppy. While this book is fiction, it is loosely inspired by the author’s own life; her own child made the same transition at a young age. This personal inspiration bleeds into the storytelling, the novel feeling consistently real and raw throughout. The detailed capturing of a child struggling with their identity, and how this impacts the rest of the family, is both a guttural and beautiful read. Frankel does not shy away from the controversial or complicated elements of the issues at hand, the brutal honesty of the family’s battle with a society lagging behind the children it is raising shining through in moments of pain, betrayal, and above all, strength.