How the Light Gets In

A Novel

De: Joyce Maynard

Narrado por: Joyce Maynard

From New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her beloved novel Count the Ways—a complex story of three generations of a family and its remarkable, resilient, indomitable matriarch, Eleanor.

Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface.

How the Light Gets In follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024) as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world (climate change, the January 6th insurrection, school violence) and shape their lives (later-life love, parental alienation, steadfast friendship). With her trademark sensitivity and insight, Joyce Maynard paints an indelible portrait of characters both familiar and new making their way over rough, messy, and treacherous terrain to find their way to what is, for each, a place to call “home.”

©2024 Joyce Maynard (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Perfection!

Until this profoundly beautiful novel, the prequel - Count the Ways - was one of my all time favorite books. It is possible that When the Light Gets In is even better. Joyce Maynard presents an inspirational, yet human, mother in the character of Eleanor. As in Count the Ways, Eleanor is a creative, loving mother with talents ranging from canning tomatoes and making spaghetti Carbonara to writing and illustrating children’s books all while energetically raising her 3 children who are adults in this novel. There is a daughter who is estranged from Eleanor, a son who was brain injured in childhood, and a brilliant and kind transgender son. There is a love affair with a narcissistic climate activist who cannot accept that, at her core, Eleanor is a mother. I was in awe of this mother. Her sweet son, Toby, has a large role in the story. For this I was so grateful as he is a purely good soul. The story is read with perfect sensitivity by the author herself. This usually worries me as such narrations often strike me as inherently arrogant. Not so with Joyce Maynard. She could be a trained narrator of Audible books! My only complaint- and it was somewhat substantial until I was more fully immersed — was the amount of time spent catching the reader/listener up on all that occurred in the prequel. So don’t listen to When the Light Gets In until a period of time has passed since finishing Count the Ways. Eventually, though, I was so in love with this beautiful book and its characters that I wanted it to never end.

Touching but over-long and very sentimental

The author in her promotions has said that one need not read Count the Ways to enjoy How the Light Gets In. I would say, having read both novels, that she is right, but
one should read Count the Ways mainly because it is much the better of the two novels. The earlier work features a wider cross section of characters and incidents than in the later novel that is confined to the herioine's close circle of family and local acquaintance. Also the author in Count the Ways allows for much more suspense and intrigue in the plot that the later novel limits largely to the heroine's challenges after her late ex-husband's death with her grown children. Most challenging for me as a reader is the intensely emotional and sentimental authorial advocacy with which she overwhelms the novel's "sympathetic" characters, principally Toby. One character in particular, Guy, Eleanor's lover, is drawn in a more detached tone that makes him come alive so vividly by contrast with the "favored" ones. Particularly in the second half there are just too many short instances that focus on Toby and Spider and drag the novel. I know that the author has been celebrated for her narration of this novel. I am pleased for her honor but for me her telling suffers from her very highly pitched, slowly spoken, and condescending narrative that made me feel that I was hearing so much of the novel at a children's story hour.

Breathtaking

I loved everything about this book: the writing, the story, the timeline including true events, the narration.

Heart felt narration, fantastic.

The variety, it is like a patchwork of real life intricacies. Amazing. I want to give it 10/10!!

Many interesting characters

Though at times I felt the book became a bit repetitive the story always brought me back. There was always a turn or a twist to make me want to keep listening to see what would happen in the life of one or another of the people. The book is long but I do highly recommend it.

Fully developed, touchingly human characters.

In brief, I loved the metaphor of light filtering through the broken places in the lives of most of the characters. Loss, grief, perseverance, quiet contentment, moments of joy: all pieces that somehow cohere. The glue is love. This is truly an uplifting book.

Would have given this a 5

Good storytelling and well written. Also appreciated the author’s note connecting music to her characters. Didn’t appreciate the author’s need to include so much political grumbling. If I wanted to read about politics I would buy a book about politics. Feels artificially inserted in the story and distracts from what was otherwise a good story.

It takes a lifetime to learn to forgive

Joyce Maynard’s story “How the Light Gets In” and the one that started it all, “Count the Ways,” is a beautiful story of a family like so many. Nothing special and yet everything extraordinary. I loved it. I will deeply miss spending time with the main character, the flawed and perfectly broken Eleanor, and her oh-so-human children, everyone else too. The story of the estrangement between Eleanor and her daughter has been a healing balm for me. Just knowing there are so many others out there like me — gives me hope.

Wonderful!

I came to this book wanting to hear more about the characters (this is the continuation of Count The Ways), and feared the ending - I was surely going to be left wanting more. Instead, it beautifully sends these guys off into the future. And the voice of the author is beyond my capacity to describe - intimate, kind, sure of itself. Loved every second of it, and I am left happy. Thank you!!!

Just ok

I have read and enjoyed all books by Joyce Maynard. This one has a familiar storyline and is a pleasant read. Where I almost stopped listening is where political garbage was interjected into the storyline. It was completely unnecessary and very annoying. Regardless of one's feelings about politics and political climate, one does not pick up a novel to read author's strong feelings on the subject. I HATED the passages about the politics and was very tempted to stop listening to what I considered a decent book.