This Is How It Always Is: A Novel

Laurie Frankel

Jan 2017 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Gabra Zackman

About this audiobook

The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

*Named one of the top 10 books of 2017 by People Magazine*

“It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think.” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret...and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after...until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change...and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And 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. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

"The audiobook will undoubtedly steal hearts" - AudioFile

Ratings and reviews

A beautifully written story about, among many things, family and ambiguity. There is a major plot line running through the book, but Laurie Frankel does a fantastic job making it feel like it's just one of the many possible stories that could be told through this family. It's easy to forget it's fiction. Each line is constructed with purpose. There are humorous asides, foreshadows of tension, foreshadows of hope, creative parallels, promises made and fulfilled, and everything is a metaphor. It's written how people think in their heads. Rarely have I been made to feel as empathetic towards a character as I have for one in this novel. I teared up several times. For the audiobook specifically, Gabra Zackman does an excellent job creating a distinct and fitting voice for each character. Zackman's tone and pace match the energy of the prose perfectly. A performance worth the price.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a thoughtful and heartwarming look at how a family deals with the challenges of raising a transgender child. I really appreciate how Frankel takes the time to explore how each member of this closeknit group handles different situations as they arise. This amazing cast of characters could prove quite a challenge in audio, but Gabra Zackman does an incredible job of bringing a uniqe voice to each of them. Zackman delivers a stunning performance!

Thought-provoking, touching, and full of imagery.

About the author

Laurie Frankel is the author of the novels This Is How It Always Is, The Atlas of Love, and Goodbye for Now. She lives in Seattle with her family.