"This Is How It Always Is," by Laurie Frankel

I have a bit of a negative attitude toward books that are too much “about” a social or political topic. I am probably contradicting myself here, because I am sure I have written here in the past that literature can and should take on important social issues, and some of the greatest novels have done so. It is just that there is a fine line between engaging with such topics, on the one hand, and being didactic or even preachy about them, on the other hand. I can’t decide where Laurie Frankel’s novel (which I recently listened to on CD during my commute and a road trip), “This is How It Always Is” (Flatiron Books, 2017; Macmillan Audiobooks) falls on that spectrum. The book describes a family in which the youngest of five boys, Claude, says, at the age of five years old, that he wants to be a girl. His parents and his older brothers are all completely supportive, but stymied about the best way to respond. They allow him to dress as a girl and at certain points to “pass” as a girl, but they are hesitant about more intrusive and perhaps permanent medical steps. The whole family is on a journey regarding Claude, his present and his future, and they are all strongly affected by the situation. We see them over the course of several years, one major cross-country move, many events, a long trip abroad, and much more. Claude’s father is a writer, and his fairy tales, told to all the boys, are a way of helping everyone understand and frame the dilemmas and the emotions they are all dealing with. The book puts the reader right in the middle of a situation that most of us have not experienced directly, and pushes us to imagine all the feelings and necessary decisions and consequences that the family and child face. The novel is not preachy, and not didactic, except in the sense of being obviously educational; there are times when the prose is quite expository, such as when the parents read aloud to each other from their research on transgender children and lives. But the overall feeling of the novel is that we are privileged to see into the heart of a family and a child with a particular life experience, and to walk along the road that they walk along, at least for a little while. The characters and the plot are compelling, and the author involves us readers throughout.