Every family has strengths and every family also has weaknesses. What is spoken, enacted and demonstrated can be just as powerful as what is left unsaid, to be figured out or reconciled later. Within the family the parent often has a profound responsibility – to provide comfort and care, to teach us a good way to be in the world – but should we expect them to teach us everything?
Gretchen Shirm’s The Crying Room is a novel that encompasses three generations of a family. Deftly jumping across time and place, Shirm switches between Bernie, her two daughters, Allison and Susie, and her granddaughter, Monica. There’s a well-struck balance between these four characters, despite this novel being on the shortish side. While the women interact with each other and relate closely, they each also face their own unique challenges, with self-worth, love and relationships, old age and tragedy. They’re like a set of related prisms, all reflecting their own unique experiences back on to the central mirror of the family. The crack in this mirror is the need for emotional intimacy – a facet missing from Bernie’s life and the lives of her children and grandchild.
