"What she wanted now was to frighten him with her own flesh, with what he had rejected; to make him feel ashamed the way he made her feel ashamed."

Chosen for Book Riot's 2018 Read Harder Challenge - "an Oprah Book Club selection".

To set the scene: we're in the midwest United States, in the 1970s. Ellen, James and their two children move back in with James's parents after he loses his job. He seems content to stay there, oh, forever, and Ellen could not conceive of anything worse. Their relationship, which we come to find out was only pushed to such a permanent state due to the impropriety of being stuck overnight together in a car during a blizzard, is barely existent. Ellen is so desperately unhappy; her mother-in-law Mary-Margaret is frail and bitter and caustic, her father-in-law has an explosive temper and quick fists.

Ansay does her best to nudge you toward one view of Mary-Margaret (awful) through Ellen and her daughter's points-of-view, and then turns it around so we can get a glimpse of what it's like to be Mary-Margaret, with a Level Four Tragic Backstory. Don't get me wrong, it's terrible (child death and domestic abuse and marital rape), but I found it difficult to feel anything more than vague pity because she was still inflicting emotional pain onto others with her behavior in the present narrative.

Ellen is troubled and depressed and angry and apathetic, all of which comes in waves. She finally learns some Real Truths about her husband's family (see: Tragic Backstory) and this, in the end, is when she is finally able to come to a decision for her own family. It is a very bittersweet ending, with only the slightest bit of hope to cut through the bleakness of the overall tone of the novel. I didn't dislike it, but god, was I ever sad after it ended.