Count the Ways: A Novel

Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of July 2021: Eleanor meets Cam at a craft fair in the 1970s; they fall in love and he moves into her New Hampshire farmhouse. Soon, they are parents to three young children. Eleanor throws herself into making the best childhood for her children—the kind of childhood she didn’t have—and also financially supporting the family. In one unforgettable scene, Eleanor labors over a bûche de Noël for Christmas dinner. Cam is about to leave the house to go cross country skiing, and Eleanor is so angry at his lack of effort that she throws the elaborate cake into the trash. Count the Ways is full of the tiny ways a marriage is built and broken. And while a series of significant events eventually tears this family apart, it’s the minutiae of everyday life that cracks the foundation of Eleanor and Cam’s marriage. A sweeping epic told over decades, we see this family grow and change, although Eleanor’s maternal sacrifices consistently loom large. I haven’t stopped thinking about Count the Ways since I finished it. This is—quite simply—the best book I’ve read so far in 2021. —Sarah Gelman, Amazon Book Review Product Description In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family—from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their livesEleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.  Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours.A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness. Review “A fearlessly candid, heartrendingly forthright examination of the joys and terrors of family life from the perspective of a woman of unusual sensitivity and empathy, Count the Ways takes us on a memorable journey.” — Joyce Carol Oates"Cut[s] across moments of national and personal upheaval to examine the complex web of family against the backdrop of history." — New York Times Book Review"Wonderfully absorbing, precise and emotionally astute . . .I was moved by the characters' ambivalences, their misgivings, their anger, but most of all by their complex and fascinating love."  — Marisa Silver, New York Times bestselling author of The Mysteries"Sensitively plumbing the complexity of human emotions, of love and forgiveness, [Maynard] draws readers into a deep, aching attachment to her characters, creating an ultimately hopeful tale just right for this moment." — Booklist (starred review)"The novel bites off a lot—a Brett Kavanaugh–inspired storyline, a domestic abuse situation, a trans child, Eleanor's

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