Winner of the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Award!One of Booklist’s Top 10 Books of the Year!A provocative and timely new novel by the author of Inheriting Edith, one that will haunt you long after the final page is turned… never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle. She’s also secretly addicted to the Oxycontin intended for her husband.
For three years, Sylvie has repressed her grief about the heartbreaking stillbirth of her newborn daughter, Delilah. On the morning of the anniversary of her death, when she just can’t face doing one…more…thing: she takes one—just one—of her husband’s discarded pain pills. And suddenly she feels patient, kinder, and miraculously relaxed. She tells herself that the pills are temporary, just a gift, and that when the supply runs out she’ll go back to her regularly scheduled programming.
But days turn into weeks, and Sylvie slips slowly into a nightmare. At first, Paul and Teddy are completely unaware, but this changes quickly as her desperate choices reveal her desperate state. As the Bar Mitzvah nears, all three of them must face the void within themselves, both alone and together.
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46 year old Sylvie Snow is a person that we all know. She could be your neighbor, your best friend or a family member. She is a hardworking wife and mother with a career and a myriad of stresses on her every day. As the novel begins, it’s the three year anniversary of her daughter’s stillbirth – something that she feels her husband doesn’t care about even though it’s a very painful day for her. On top of that, her husband is recuperating from a broken ankle and isn’t able to help at all with cleaning or shopping plus she has to take care of him, along with everyone and everything else. When she is getting ready to start her day, she finds the bottle of pain pills that were prescribed for her husband that he had never taken and after mentally reviewing her life, she decides that she’ll take one pill – just one and then she’ll quit – to make this day more bearable. She tells herself that one pill won’t matter and that she needs help getting through this day. But one pill quickly becomes two and then even more until she realizes that she needs the pills to survive. As she is heading for the bottom of her family life, her job and basically her sanity, she realizes that she has become addicted and the pills have become the only important thing in her life.
This family could be any family in upper class America. Addicts aren’t just young people but the drug epidemic is rampant at all ages and all classes – it is happening everywhere. I found this book interesting because it looked at addiction in a 40 something female who appeared to have the good life before addiction changed everything for her and her family.
This was an interesting well written book about a family in trouble who don’t share their thoughts and feelings with each other. Will they be able to learn to trust each other and become a family again?
Zoe Fishman handles a difficult topic with great compassion and sensitivity. Her characters are so real – so flawed, so angry, hurt, and vulnerable – that I sometimes found myself cringing as they made bad (but inevitable) decisions. From the first page, I was riveted to this book and now that I’ve finished it, I’m still thinking about these characters and the way addiction can creep into the most ordinary lives and destroy them. This would be a wonderful book club selection.
With psychological acuity, Fishman… takes us to the place where there is beauty in brokenness, where there is light in the dark, and where we can find intimacy in our honesty… From the first stunning choice to the last, I could not put this novel down.
Though it speaks to one of the most difficult issues facing our nation with wisdom and deep grace, this is not an ‘isue’ book. This is a book about people, flawed but striving, broken but hopeful. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.
The story of the Snow family could be your neighbors’ story or the story of your friends, or even that of your own family.
Sylvie Snow has not been same since the stillbirth of her daughter Delilah three years previously. Now she is preparing for her son Teddy’s upcoming bar mitzvah. On top of this her husband Paul has broken his ankle and his whining and neediness is grating on her nerves. Finally one day Sylvie just can’t take it anymore and takes one of Paul’s Hydrocodone pills. Under the influence of the pills she is calmer and kinder to her family. She likes how they make her feel so begins taking them just to get her through the bar mitzvah. She knows Paul will never notice as he refused to take any of the pills and had told her to throw them out. Thus starts her desperate cycle of addiction. Paul has his own issues dealing with the emptiness he has felt since the loss of his daughter. Teddy discovers the secrets his parents are hiding and is conflicted as to what to do.
Using alternating perspectives of Sylvie, Paul, and Teddy the reader is drawn into the story and becomes invested in the lives of the Snow family. I liked the character of Sylvie. I could relate to the stress she was dealing with on top of the grieving she never fully allowed herself to embrace. Having worked with some gang member kids previously I could understand Teddy’s position in the family – feeling he had to be the parent to his parents. It was a really heavy load for a young teen to bear.
A hauntingly realistic story relevant to today’s social environment. I highly recommend it.
Thank you to LibraryThing and William Morrow Books for the advance reading copy. All views expressed are my honest opinion.
The characters in Invisible as Air are so real; so flawed; so compelling and vulnerable. With her trademark wit and honesty, even in the face of sorrow, Fishman will take you on a journey you won’t soon forget.