The house we grew up in: a novel

Lorelei Bird raised her four children and husband in a happy, picturesque home in the Cotswolds in England. So how is it that she ended her life starving, alone, and surrounded by junk? Jewell cleverly frames the destruction of the Bird family with Lorelei's last communications, e-mails with a man she met online. As Lorelei opens up about her messy life, her three surviving children narrate their struggles with adulthood. All of their reminiscences eventually come back to Lorelei's meticulously planned, stringently unchanging Easter Sundays, particularly the one where her youngest son, Rhys, a strange and lonely 16-year-old, hanged himself. He left no note, and as the story of this fractured family unfolds, the truth eventually comes out. Jewell deftly balances present-day funeral planning with revealing, increasingly explosive revelations from the past. Just when you think this family can't endure anymore, the father is moving onto a Spanish commune with the mother of his granddaughter. This is an absolute page-turner as all of the surviving Birds make their uncertain way back to the house they grew up in.--Maguire, Susan Copyright 2010 Booklist

Jewell's most recent novel (after Before I Met You) is a melodrama starring the Bird clan: happy-go-lucky mother Lorelai, patient father Colin, headstrong eldest child Meg, meek Beth, and dissimilar twins Rory and Rhys. "They lived in a honey-colored house that sat hard up against the pavement of a picture-perfect Cotswolds village and stretched out beyond into three-quarters of an acre of rambling half-kempt gardens." The narrative alternates between 2011 and flashbacks to the kids' childhoods, and the reader sees Lorelai's eccentricities (including her propensity for hoarding) gradually begin to weigh her family down. Easter is Lorelai's favorite holiday, replete with massive egg hunts and festivities, but when a catastrophe occurs, it forever alters the course of the Birds' lives. Each member of the family begins to drift away from the others, and the subsequent years find them dealing with affairs, abandonment, and death. Years later, following another loss, the family once again gathers and is forced to confront its troubled past. Jewell keeps the reader engrossed with her characters' winding, divergent paths. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Through an email trail, Lorelei's adult children painstakingly unravel the progress of her dysfunctional illness with humor and love, while taking stock of its heartbreaking effects on the entire family. Verdict An insightful, dramatic look at the condition of hoarding. (LJ 5/15/14) (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Both witty and deeply moving, Jewell's latest tale of a fractured family spans 30 years of Easter Sundays. The Bird family lives a postcard-worthy life in the Cotswolds. Their garden cottage is filled with bric-a-brac and children's drawings; father Colin is thoughtful; the two girls, Meg and Beth, and twin boys Rory and Rhys are clever, kind and muddy. And then there's mother Lorelei, the center of their bohemian universe, whose beauty and love of beautiful things hide darker obsessions that turn everything about their life into an unfathomable mess. The novel begins in 2011 as a grown Meg enters her childhood home. Lorelei has died of starvation, and Meg is down from London to sort things out. The house is impenetrable, filled with towers of newspapers, useless baubles and piles of ceaseless hoarding. It didn't used to be that wayMeg remembers a bright childhood, in particular Easter Sundays in which an extended clan gathered for egg hunts and Lorelei's brand of childlike magic. And then one Easter when Meg is 20, they find Rhys hanging from the rafters of his room. His suicide sinks everyone: Golden Rory runs off to a Spanish commune (and continues to run, until one day he ends up in a Thai prison); sensible Meg abandons her family for the new one she makes with Bill; Beth begins an illicit affair with Bill; and Lorelei forces Colin out so her new lover, Vicky, can move in. As Meg sorts through the rubbish, we are privy to Lorelei's last correspondence to Jim, an Internet boyfriend to whom she confesses all her lonely secrets. Though Jewell's novels masquerade as breezy, they are unpredictable and emotionally complex. Jewell, a wry observer of human folly, delivers with this latest tale of loneliness and the lure of beautiful things. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Lorelei Bird raised her four children and husband in a happy, picturesque home in the Cotswolds in England. So how is it that she ended her life starving, alone, and surrounded by junk? Jewell cleverly frames the destruction of the Bird family with Lorelei's last communications, e-mails with a man she met online. As Lorelei opens up about her messy life, her three surviving children narrate their struggles with adulthood. All of their reminiscences eventually come back to Lorelei's meticulously planned, stringently unchanging Easter Sundays, particularly the one where her youngest son, Rhys, a strange and lonely 16-year-old, hanged himself. He left no note, and as the story of this fractured family unfolds, the truth eventually comes out. Jewell deftly balances present-day funeral planning with revealing, increasingly explosive revelations from the past. Just when you think this family can't endure anymore, the father is moving onto a Spanish commune with the mother of his granddaughter. This is an absolute page-turner as all of the surviving Birds make their uncertain way back to the house they grew up in. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

Jewell's (Before I Met You) latest novel is a dramatic trip through the dysfunctional lives of the Bird family: realistic Meg, wistful Beth, twins Rory and Rhys, and their parents, Colin and Lorelei. The Birds live in a charming village in the Cotswolds and hold elaborate egg hunts in the garden of their home every Easter. Then a tragic event begins to tear the Birds apart, scattering family members. Lorelei starts hoarding as the Bird children grow up and make mistakes of their own out in the world. When she dies unexpectedly, they come back to face their past and attempt to figure out what went so wrong with their family. VERDICT The plot relies heavily on the melodramatic decisions made by the Birds, occasionally becoming ridiculous. Still, it's a page-turner that will appeal to readers of women's fiction.—Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH

The abundantly popular British novelist, who rejects the term chick lit, returns with a touching tale of a family in meltdown. The Bird family members—vibrant hippie mom Lorelei, dreamy dad Colin (note the Harry Potter glasses), daughters Meg and Beth, and the cute blond twins Rory and Rhys—live happily in a sunny little Cotswolds cottage. Then one Easter, tragedy strikes, the family is torn apart, and only when the children are adults do the Birds try to reckon with what has really happened to them. With a reading group guide.

Through an email trail, Lorelei's adult children painstakingly unravel the progress of her dysfunctional illness with humor and love, while taking stock of its heartbreaking effects on the entire family. VERDICT An insightful, dramatic look at the condition of hoarding. (LJ 5/15/14)

Through an email trail, Lorelei's adult children painstakingly unravel the progress of her dys-functional illness with humor and love, while taking stock of its heartbreaking effects on the entire family. Verdict An insightful, dramatic look at the condition of hoarding. (LJ 5/15/14) (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted

Jewell's most recent novel (after Before I Met You) is a melodrama starring the Bird clan: happy-go-lucky mother Lorelai, patient father Colin, headstrong eldest child Meg, meek Beth, and dissimilar twins Rory and Rhys. "They lived in a honey-colored house that sat hard up against the pavement of a picture-perfect Cotswolds village and stretched out beyond into three-quarters of an acre of rambling half-kempt gardens." The narrative alternates between 2011 and flashbacks to the kids' childhoods, and the reader sees Lorelai's eccentricities (including her propensity for hoarding) gradually begin to weigh her family down. Easter is Lorelai's favorite holiday, replete with massive egg hunts and festivities, but when a catastrophe occurs, it forever alters the course of the Birds' lives. Each member of the family begins to drift away from the others, and the subsequent years find them dealing with affairs, abandonment, and death. Years later, following another loss, the family once again gathers and is forced to confront its troubled past. Jewell keeps the reader engrossed with her characters' winding, divergent paths. (Aug.)