Author luncheon with Claire Lombardo
Join us at Froggy's French Cafe for an author luncheon and discussion with Claire Lombardo discussing her new novel:
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
Wednesday, June 19, 2024 11:30am-1:30pm
306 Green Bay Road
Highwood, IL 60040
$75 includes lunch and a copy of the book (additional copies on hand for sale)
Space is limited, please RSVP at 847-234-4420
The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.
She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.
Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.
CLAIRE LOMBARDO is the author of The Most Fun We Ever Had, which has been optioned for television by Reese Witherspoon. Claire is a graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in, among others, Playboy, Barrelhouse Magazine, Little Fiction, and Longform. Her story, "I Only Want to Talk About Nice Things," was one of 2016's Best of Net, and was #1 on Longform's 2015 fiction list. Prior to publishing The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire spent several years working with homeless children and families in Chicago. She has taught fiction writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Grinnell College and currently works part-time as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books. A native of Oak Park, Illinois, she now lives in Iowa City, Iowa with her dog, Renee