Genre Fiction
![Gabrielle Zevin - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001IGJWR2.jpg)
The Hole We're In
With The Hole We're In-a bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even more troubled America-award-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents. Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she's been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they've dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children-especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We're In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin's deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.
Editorial Reviews
"Equal parts sharply funny and sobering, Zevin's portrait of a family in financial free fall captures the zeitgeist."-People
"Every day newspaper articles chronicle families battered by the recession, circling the drain in unemployment and debt or scraping by with minimum-wage jobs. But no novel has truly captured that struggle until now. . . . [Zevin's characerts]-flawed, devoted, cranky, impetuous, utterly relatable-come blazingly alive . . . [in this chronicle of] how a once-loving family reacts when times get bad."-Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly (A-)
"In the provocative novel The Hole We're In . . . Gabrielle Zevin follows the Pomeroy [family] from 1998 to 2022 and addresses such issues as abortion, racism, and the emotional fallout of a stress-filled economy. Yet somehow the novel feels generous: We identify with the Pomeroys' troubles while we gasp at their casual brutality and marvel at [youngest daughter] Patsy, who journeys from oppressive Bible schools to military service in Iraq and, finally, to becoming a more loving mother than her own could have dreamed of being."-O, The Oprah Magazine
"The Hole We're In criticizes our rabid consumer culture, as well as the people who've bought into it without examining the actual or hidden costs. . . . Zevin's writing is often surprisingly, if darkly, funny, thanks to her wry and astute cultural observations. . . . [Main character] Patsy is flawed like the rest of her family, but she also has complex thoughts and tries to live without hypocrisy . . . Zevin breathes real life into this tough-girl vet, a heroine for our times, recognizable from life but new to fiction."-Malena Watrous, The New York Times Book Review
"It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so compelling about Gabrielle Zevin's new novel. Merely summarizing the plot doesn't do the book justice-it's far more gripping than you'd expect from a family drama about the consequences of falling deeper and deeper into credit card debt. The real force of the novel, aside from Zevin's elegant, no-words-wasted prose, comes from her complicated, multifaceted characters, who have an astonishing capacity for extremes of both generous and selfish behavior."-Bookpage
"The Hole We're In is a story of financial lives, and it makes plain that the financial life of a family is just as important as, if not more important than, its religious life. Even more surprising: It's just as com...
"Every day newspaper articles chronicle families battered by the recession, circling the drain in unemployment and debt or scraping by with minimum-wage jobs. But no novel has truly captured that struggle until now. . . . [Zevin's characerts]-flawed, devoted, cranky, impetuous, utterly relatable-come blazingly alive . . . [in this chronicle of] how a once-loving family reacts when times get bad."-Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly (A-)
"In the provocative novel The Hole We're In . . . Gabrielle Zevin follows the Pomeroy [family] from 1998 to 2022 and addresses such issues as abortion, racism, and the emotional fallout of a stress-filled economy. Yet somehow the novel feels generous: We identify with the Pomeroys' troubles while we gasp at their casual brutality and marvel at [youngest daughter] Patsy, who journeys from oppressive Bible schools to military service in Iraq and, finally, to becoming a more loving mother than her own could have dreamed of being."-O, The Oprah Magazine
"The Hole We're In criticizes our rabid consumer culture, as well as the people who've bought into it without examining the actual or hidden costs. . . . Zevin's writing is often surprisingly, if darkly, funny, thanks to her wry and astute cultural observations. . . . [Main character] Patsy is flawed like the rest of her family, but she also has complex thoughts and tries to live without hypocrisy . . . Zevin breathes real life into this tough-girl vet, a heroine for our times, recognizable from life but new to fiction."-Malena Watrous, The New York Times Book Review
"It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so compelling about Gabrielle Zevin's new novel. Merely summarizing the plot doesn't do the book justice-it's far more gripping than you'd expect from a family drama about the consequences of falling deeper and deeper into credit card debt. The real force of the novel, aside from Zevin's elegant, no-words-wasted prose, comes from her complicated, multifaceted characters, who have an astonishing capacity for extremes of both generous and selfish behavior."-Bookpage
"The Hole We're In is a story of financial lives, and it makes plain that the financial life of a family is just as important as, if not more important than, its religious life. Even more surprising: It's just as com...
Readers Top Reviews
Cruisebabe
This was the second book that I read by Gabrielle Zevin. In my opinion it did not live up to her debut novel THE STORIED LIFE OF A. J. FIKRY (absolutely loved that book!). I thought the characters were a bit disjointed and at times the storyline hard to follow. Not my favorite book by a long shot.
Kris Hicks Lean
Certainly a great read for today and the financial difficulty of our economy. This book shows how death and greed can tear a family apart. Accepting our positions no matter how bleak or magnificent they seem, they change with the blink of an eye
Charliep Kris H
I read Zevin's book, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow." I gave that one a five. I decided to try one of her earlier books and was slightly disappointed. If found the organization and the focus on the characters to be a bit odd. The book is separated into three parts. In part one, all the characters are introduced. There is a focus on one character in particular. This made me think this is who I am following as the main character. Surprise. Part two. The real main character is now finally introduced. The writing flows well, but the topic of overspending and creating credit card debt doesn't hold up. This is more a story of people who came from nothing, were raised in cultish religious families, were educated, and carried all their dysfunction as adults. Then we see how they passed this on to their children. But we do see how lives like this play out. And that was interesting. The lesson here is we are either digging a hole in life or digging out of a hole in the life we created. Sorry to ramble. My review here reflects how the book felt while I was reading it. Read Zevin's "Tomorrow..." which is much more interesting and insightful.
