“The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”
“The situation did have its effect on us boys, of course. Me in particular. I loved my dad. I was the closest to him, and he commenced to use me in his campaign to win back Mom.”
″ ... there was his house, small but detached. It had been the one thing his mum had insisted on in the divorce […] after his dad had left for America with Stephanie, the new wife. That had been six years ago, so long now that Conor sometimes couldn’t remember what it was like having a dad in the house.”
“I called my parents and asked if I could come home, but they wouldn’t even speak to me. It was bad enough that I’d married a Jew, but now I wanted a divorce as well? My father made Mother tell me that in his eyes I had died the day I eloped.”
“As for a divorced daughter – according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage – Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject.”
“One of Gottman’s findings is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one.”
Simon, Jared and Mallory Grace move into a creepy Victorian house with their mother after their parents divorce and the three kids get themselves in trouble. After moving in, they discover that something isn’t quite right with the house. It’s haunted, but not by ghosts. It’s haunted by fairies and other classic fantasy creatures from another world.
The book mainly focuses on how divorces affect the children. The book tries to be fun at times, but the characters are so toxic that it takes the fun away.
It is a great bedtime read and funny at certain parts and sad and touching at others. The story moves very fast so try to savor those arguments because they mean so much.
You get a better sense of how they were in their own homes but also how the children felt about the whole mess, because that’s what divorce creates, a mess.
I am ignorant of what has become of a considerable portion of my fortune, once very tolerable, while I am sure, madame, that you know perfectly well. For women have infallible instincts; they can even explain the marvellous by an algebraic calculation they have invented; but I, who only understand my own figures, know nothing more than that one day these figures deceived me. Have you admired the rapidity of my fall? Have you been slightly dazzled at the sudden fusion of my ingots? I confess I have seen nothing but the fire; let us hope you have found some gold among the ashes. With this consoling idea, I leave you, madame, and most prudent wife, without any conscientious reproach for abandoning you; you have friends left, and the ashes I have already mentioned, and above all the liberty I hasten to restore to you.