Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family.Īnd it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan.Īnd families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world.

And its about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts children grow but not always according to plan. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. It’s a story about the challenges of parenting and love, period.

He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess. This Is How It Always Is isn’t only a novel about the challenges of life with an atypical child. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. This is how children change…and then change the world. In This is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel spins a beguiling tale of a sprawling, loving, ever-changing, unconventional, and yet completely typical modern family as they make their way though a world with no easy answers and no magic solutions. This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated. This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how it always is novel