At the Table: a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year

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We start with a meal where the parents reveal they’re getting divorced and we end with a meal shared with mother and daughter who are, due to the events they’ve been through, forging a new relationship.

The neighborhood looks different too, but she’s still the same woman and it’s still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide. I’ve read a lot of books about women struggling through their twenties, this is a book about the whole family struggling through life - and it is stunning. But as the siblings grapple with the pressures of thirtysomething life, their parents struggle to protect the fragile façade of their own relationship, and the secrets they've both been keeping.The style of writing is informal which makes it easy to connect with the situations in each chapter. Armed with a key and new knowledge about his parents' past, Nik sets out to unlock the secrets that his mother has been holding onto his whole life.

The only character that I had a smidgen of sympathy for was Jamie, but even that wasn't enough to make the story enjoyable. I liked reading all the interactions between Jamie and Nicole and the way that they functioned as siblings. Oh to be a reader all the time instead being restricted to a single silly mind and body that has to feel feelings and take things personally. Potem odcina od siebie matkę, którą uważa za winną rozstania, choć… wcale nikt z rodziny nie dał jej tego do zrozumienia. But to keep ourselves on our toes, we have a rule that author gender is alternated, girl-boy-girl-boy, and the continents always rotated (with occasional glitches).Nicole immediately takes her father’s side and refuses to speak to Linda, while her hard-partying and drinking start to catch up with her. Interesting and unlikeable characters (in some aspects) who are well fleshed out and easy to connect to. A year of lunches, dinners and drinks we become acquainted with the Maguires, Powell’s witty, smartly observed prose gives us a sense of them all.