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What I Had Before I Had You
Written in radiant prose and with stunning psychological acuity, award-winning author Sarah Cornwell's What I Had Before I Had You is a deeply poignant story that captures the joys and sorrows of growing up and learning to let go.
Olivia Reed was fifteen when she left her hometown of Ocean Vista on the Jersey Shore. Two decades later, divorced and unstrung, she returns with her teenage daughter, Carrie, and nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Distracted by thoughts of the past, Olivia fails to notice when Daniel disappears from her side. Her frantic search for him sparks memories of the summer of 1987, when she exploded out of the cocoon of her mother's fierce, smothering love and into a sudden, full-throttle adolescence, complete with dangerous new friends, first love, and a rebellion so intense that it utterly recharted the course of her life.
Olivia's mother, Myla, was a practicing psychic whose powers waxed and waned along with her mercurial moods. Myla raised Olivia to be a guarded child, and also to believe in the ever-present infant ghosts of her twin sisters, whom Myla took care of as if they were alive—diapers, baby food, an empty nursery kept like a shrine. At fifteen, Olivia saw her sisters for the first time, not as ghostly infants but as teenagers on the beach. But when Myla denied her vision, Olivia set out to learn the truth—a journey that led to shattering discoveries about herself and her family.
Sarah Cornwell seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this riveting debut novel, as she examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the powerful forces of loss, family history, and magical thinking.
Olivia Reed was fifteen when she left her hometown of Ocean Vista on the Jersey Shore. Two decades later, divorced and unstrung, she returns with her teenage daughter, Carrie, and nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Distracted by thoughts of the past, Olivia fails to notice when Daniel disappears from her side. Her frantic search for him sparks memories of the summer of 1987, when she exploded out of the cocoon of her mother's fierce, smothering love and into a sudden, full-throttle adolescence, complete with dangerous new friends, first love, and a rebellion so intense that it utterly recharted the course of her life.
Olivia's mother, Myla, was a practicing psychic whose powers waxed and waned along with her mercurial moods. Myla raised Olivia to be a guarded child, and also to believe in the ever-present infant ghosts of her twin sisters, whom Myla took care of as if they were alive—diapers, baby food, an empty nursery kept like a shrine. At fifteen, Olivia saw her sisters for the first time, not as ghostly infants but as teenagers on the beach. But when Myla denied her vision, Olivia set out to learn the truth—a journey that led to shattering discoveries about herself and her family.
Sarah Cornwell seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this riveting debut novel, as she examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the powerful forces of loss, family history, and magical thinking.
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First published January 7, 2014
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About the author
Sarah Cornwell
4 books44 followersSarah Cornwell grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania. Her fiction has appeared in publications including The 2013 Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Missouri Review, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, and Hunger Mountain, and her screenwriting has been honored with a Humanitas Prize. A former James Michener Fellow at UT-Austin, Sarah has worked as an investigator of police misconduct, a writer in the schools, an MCAT tutor, a psychological research interviewer, a toy seller, and a screenwriter. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 328 reviews
January 17, 2014
3.5 An insightful and engrossing read about bi-polar disorder and its effects on a family throughout generations. Olivia was used to her mother leaving and then re-appearing all happy and boisterous. All she wanted was a normal home and a mother who was always there, but though she did get a mother who loved her, normal would have meant her mom taking her medicine, something her mother did not like to do. It would be years, before she would learn the truth and at that point she was confronting her own demons. Her search would uncover hidden secrets and her mother's hidden past.
I quite identified with Olivia and this story absolutely pulled me into a place I am very familiar with. Bi-polar disorder runs or should I say gallops through my husband's family. We are very fortunate that the treatment for this is for the most part capable of controlling this life changing mental illness. I think this author did a fantastic job portraying the lives and fears, the secrecy, the acting out and all other facets of this illness. The prose was haunting at times and though there were plenty of occasions when I did not much like Olivia, I did understand what she was going through.
The reveals in the book were surprising and the book is very well done.
I quite identified with Olivia and this story absolutely pulled me into a place I am very familiar with. Bi-polar disorder runs or should I say gallops through my husband's family. We are very fortunate that the treatment for this is for the most part capable of controlling this life changing mental illness. I think this author did a fantastic job portraying the lives and fears, the secrecy, the acting out and all other facets of this illness. The prose was haunting at times and though there were plenty of occasions when I did not much like Olivia, I did understand what she was going through.
The reveals in the book were surprising and the book is very well done.
December 4, 2013
I have read novels with bipolar characters – I’m thinking of Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot or Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted – but I don’t ever recall reading a book with multiple generations who suffer from the disorder. So kudos to author Sarah Cornwell for taking on this challenging task and doing it so authentically.
Olivia is a recently divorced mother with sole custody of two children – teen Carrie and her younger brother Daniel, who as recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. On a trip back to their hometown, Daniel disappears and Olivia is catapulted back to her own strange childhood with her erratic mother, Myla, a psychic…and the ghosts of her stillborn twin sisters. “I trusted that my thought were laid out for her to read like a played hand of cards. As I grew, I found that I was wrong – that I could hold my thoughts away from her, and this discovery made me bolder but lonelier, too.”
What I Had Before I Had You is about any number of things: it’s a coming-of-age novel for anyone who has lived a life that is out of sync with the rest of the world. It’s an ode to memories and how our imperfect thoughts and beliefs can suddenly take form when the missing puzzle pieces are put into place. It’s a search to embrace our most authentic stories and to claim our own authenticity.
But most of all, it’s a powerful look into a multi-generational trajectory and how our greater understanding of the bipolar disorder has influenced perceptions and actions. In earlier years, Olivia reflects, “I feel myself rising and falling like an old helium balloon, and I think that if I don’t ground myself now, I will float up to join my mother, high above reason, trailing a snipped string.” Olivia’s reactions to her mother are often driven by rebellion, frustration, distaste…and befuddlement, since she doesn’t know where her mother goes when she quite literally disappears.
Later, her beliefs are more nuanced: “What I all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty – God or whatever you call it – what if all this were part o your illness. Would you seek treatment? I have, and sometimes I wonder if the greatest passions are just out of my reach. And sometimes I am so grateful.”
As Olivia accepts and manages her own diagnosis, she is better able to understand her son, whose early-onset diagnosis presents entirely new challenges. Insightful and meditative, powerful and well-crafted, this is a promising debut. 4.5 stars.
Olivia is a recently divorced mother with sole custody of two children – teen Carrie and her younger brother Daniel, who as recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. On a trip back to their hometown, Daniel disappears and Olivia is catapulted back to her own strange childhood with her erratic mother, Myla, a psychic…and the ghosts of her stillborn twin sisters. “I trusted that my thought were laid out for her to read like a played hand of cards. As I grew, I found that I was wrong – that I could hold my thoughts away from her, and this discovery made me bolder but lonelier, too.”
What I Had Before I Had You is about any number of things: it’s a coming-of-age novel for anyone who has lived a life that is out of sync with the rest of the world. It’s an ode to memories and how our imperfect thoughts and beliefs can suddenly take form when the missing puzzle pieces are put into place. It’s a search to embrace our most authentic stories and to claim our own authenticity.
But most of all, it’s a powerful look into a multi-generational trajectory and how our greater understanding of the bipolar disorder has influenced perceptions and actions. In earlier years, Olivia reflects, “I feel myself rising and falling like an old helium balloon, and I think that if I don’t ground myself now, I will float up to join my mother, high above reason, trailing a snipped string.” Olivia’s reactions to her mother are often driven by rebellion, frustration, distaste…and befuddlement, since she doesn’t know where her mother goes when she quite literally disappears.
Later, her beliefs are more nuanced: “What I all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty – God or whatever you call it – what if all this were part o your illness. Would you seek treatment? I have, and sometimes I wonder if the greatest passions are just out of my reach. And sometimes I am so grateful.”
As Olivia accepts and manages her own diagnosis, she is better able to understand her son, whose early-onset diagnosis presents entirely new challenges. Insightful and meditative, powerful and well-crafted, this is a promising debut. 4.5 stars.
December 6, 2013
*Won Through a Goodreads Giveaway*
WOW!!!! What an eye-opening literary account of bipolar disorder and how it has manifested itself in a family!
Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her two children, Carrie and Daniel, in tow. She decides that a stop on the beach may be just what the doctor ordered before they make the final trek to New York City where the beginning of a new life is on the horizon. During this time at the beach, her nine-year-old son Daniel, goes missing. The last thing Olivia needs is to be searching for her son when she's still coming to terms with the death of her marraige, and Daniel's recent bipolar disorder diagnosis.
What I Had Before I Had You is beautifully narrated by Olivia. She recounts the time when she was fifteen and had to begin facing the truth of the world she lived in. As an only child to a whimsical mother who often disappeared for days, was her reality. Reflecting on the days of her youth in an abandoned hotel, as she searches for Daniel, is how we learn of her troubled past.
Sarah Cornwell brilliantly fuses a tense, yet heartening, plot with eloquent prose and dynamic characters. The younger Olivia is trying to find her way in a world where she never quite felt she belonged. Actually, many of the characters find they are trapped in worlds that aren't suitable causing them to be tourists in lives in which they don't belong. As a teen, her escape is found in running with a fast crowd and as an adult, it's in the arms of random lovers.
Olivia maintains the guilt for so many instances in her life. Leaving her ill mother at a young age, subjecting her children to that same abandonment, and presently losing Daniel. Her one ally. Carrie is someone she barely recognizes anymore. Olivia can feel the resentment and embarassment that permeates from her teenage pores. Unlike her own condition, whatever ails Carrie can't be fixed with pills.
What I Had Before I Had You is not only about bipolar disorder. It's an insightful and detailed chronicle of a family that's trying to put back together the pieces of their lives. In very few pages Sarah Cornwell sucks readers in and forces us to care about Olivia and her family. What I Had Before I Had You is going to be on the minds of readers long after the last page.
WOW!!!! What an eye-opening literary account of bipolar disorder and how it has manifested itself in a family!
Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her two children, Carrie and Daniel, in tow. She decides that a stop on the beach may be just what the doctor ordered before they make the final trek to New York City where the beginning of a new life is on the horizon. During this time at the beach, her nine-year-old son Daniel, goes missing. The last thing Olivia needs is to be searching for her son when she's still coming to terms with the death of her marraige, and Daniel's recent bipolar disorder diagnosis.
What I Had Before I Had You is beautifully narrated by Olivia. She recounts the time when she was fifteen and had to begin facing the truth of the world she lived in. As an only child to a whimsical mother who often disappeared for days, was her reality. Reflecting on the days of her youth in an abandoned hotel, as she searches for Daniel, is how we learn of her troubled past.
Sarah Cornwell brilliantly fuses a tense, yet heartening, plot with eloquent prose and dynamic characters. The younger Olivia is trying to find her way in a world where she never quite felt she belonged. Actually, many of the characters find they are trapped in worlds that aren't suitable causing them to be tourists in lives in which they don't belong. As a teen, her escape is found in running with a fast crowd and as an adult, it's in the arms of random lovers.
Olivia maintains the guilt for so many instances in her life. Leaving her ill mother at a young age, subjecting her children to that same abandonment, and presently losing Daniel. Her one ally. Carrie is someone she barely recognizes anymore. Olivia can feel the resentment and embarassment that permeates from her teenage pores. Unlike her own condition, whatever ails Carrie can't be fixed with pills.
What I Had Before I Had You is not only about bipolar disorder. It's an insightful and detailed chronicle of a family that's trying to put back together the pieces of their lives. In very few pages Sarah Cornwell sucks readers in and forces us to care about Olivia and her family. What I Had Before I Had You is going to be on the minds of readers long after the last page.
October 24, 2013
I received an Uncorrected Proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.
"What if all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty - God or whatever you call it - what if all this were part of your illness?" (268-269).
The thread that connects the different characters and storylines of this novel is bipolar disorder. Olivia, recently divorced from her husband, is traveling to her hometown, Ocean Vista, with her two children. Her son, Daniel, has recently been diagnosed with Early Onset Bipolar Disorder. When Daniel disappears, it sparks Olivia to reminisce on the summer of 1987, her last summer at home with her mother, who also suffered from Bipolar Disorder.
I struggled to feel connected to the characters in this novel. I understand part of this may be their mental disorder, yet I never felt like any of the characters is fully developed. Olivia, the narrator, still seems remote in some ways, and exhibits little emotion when her young son goes missing. Olivia herself reveals that she thinks she has been distant from her children, and in some ways, seems so with the reader, despite sharing memories of her difficult childhood. Additionally, once Olivia runs away, the storylines about her parentage start to get difficult to believe and I found myself growing suspicious of how realistic the novel could really be.
However, the beauty of this novel is in the writing, which occasionally struck me with its unique turns of phrase. "It is my first kiss, and how terrible. His tongue is chill as lunch meat" (53). And in the clarity with which Olivia pinpoints the central rupture of her marriage: "When something broke in our house, a lamp or a glass, I would take it to my workbench and try to glue it back together. But if Sam found it before I did, he would drop it in the trash without a thought. This is why I left him in the end" (203). Because of course, Olivia and her son Daniel are both broken in some ways - Olivia sees pieces to salvage that Sam cannot.
Cornwell does an excellent job portraying the realities of living with bipolar disorder. "I nurse a global feeling of poor fit. My clothing itches and pulls, and all things become shadow cousins of themselves: songs slide off-key, the sand is too hot, the ocean a rude blue, mean with undertow. The sun scorches the part in my hair. I have appetite only for citrus and cold tea" (15). Over the course of the novel, Olivia confronts her past and being raised by a very mentally unstable mother, ultimately leaving her ready to fully confront the reality of raising a son with the same disorder.
"What if all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty - God or whatever you call it - what if all this were part of your illness?" (268-269).
The thread that connects the different characters and storylines of this novel is bipolar disorder. Olivia, recently divorced from her husband, is traveling to her hometown, Ocean Vista, with her two children. Her son, Daniel, has recently been diagnosed with Early Onset Bipolar Disorder. When Daniel disappears, it sparks Olivia to reminisce on the summer of 1987, her last summer at home with her mother, who also suffered from Bipolar Disorder.
I struggled to feel connected to the characters in this novel. I understand part of this may be their mental disorder, yet I never felt like any of the characters is fully developed. Olivia, the narrator, still seems remote in some ways, and exhibits little emotion when her young son goes missing. Olivia herself reveals that she thinks she has been distant from her children, and in some ways, seems so with the reader, despite sharing memories of her difficult childhood. Additionally, once Olivia runs away, the storylines about her parentage start to get difficult to believe and I found myself growing suspicious of how realistic the novel could really be.
However, the beauty of this novel is in the writing, which occasionally struck me with its unique turns of phrase. "It is my first kiss, and how terrible. His tongue is chill as lunch meat" (53). And in the clarity with which Olivia pinpoints the central rupture of her marriage: "When something broke in our house, a lamp or a glass, I would take it to my workbench and try to glue it back together. But if Sam found it before I did, he would drop it in the trash without a thought. This is why I left him in the end" (203). Because of course, Olivia and her son Daniel are both broken in some ways - Olivia sees pieces to salvage that Sam cannot.
Cornwell does an excellent job portraying the realities of living with bipolar disorder. "I nurse a global feeling of poor fit. My clothing itches and pulls, and all things become shadow cousins of themselves: songs slide off-key, the sand is too hot, the ocean a rude blue, mean with undertow. The sun scorches the part in my hair. I have appetite only for citrus and cold tea" (15). Over the course of the novel, Olivia confronts her past and being raised by a very mentally unstable mother, ultimately leaving her ready to fully confront the reality of raising a son with the same disorder.
January 27, 2014
Sarah Cornwell's What I Had Before I Had You is a beautiful, poignant, and exquisitely written novel about the ripple effects mental illness causes on a family.
Olivia Reed was raised by her dynamic and manic mother, Myla, a practicing psychic, in the Jersey Shore town of Ocean Vista. Fiercely protective of Olivia one minute, and disappearing to leave her home alone for days on end the next, Myla taught her daughter to believe in the powers of the universe. She also taught Olivia to believe in the ghosts of her twin baby sisters, who died before Olivia was born. Myla kept the nursery a shrine to these babies that never lived, even going so far as keeping baby food and diapers in the house, and leaving food on their highchairs.
The summer that Olivia turned 15, she saw her sisters for the first time, as teenagers, and believed that this sighting signified she was coming into her own powers, much like her mother. But when Myla disputes this vision, Olivia is motivated for the first time to challenge her mother's constraints and begin living a carefree life, determined to find out the truth of her sisters. This journey of discovery teaches Olivia about friendship, love, and loss, but also uncovers some truths she never expected, truths which lead to an irreparable rift in her family and change the course of her life.
"I left my mother here when she was sick and sad and alone. When I was fifteen, someone lowered a rope into my well, and I climbed it and pulled it up after me. I like to think that if my mother had waited two or three more years than she did, I would have grown up enough to come home to her. But I can't be sure."
Years later, Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her own teenage daughter, Carrie, and her nine-year-old son, Daniel, who has recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which served as the catalyst for the end of her marriage. Her return to her hometown sparks memories of that tumultuous summer, of how her life changed, and of the guilt she feels about her relationship with her mother. When Daniel suddenly disappears, the search for him forces her to examine the course her life has taken and how mental illness has shaped it, and the role her mother has played all along.
What I Had Before I Had You shifts back and forth between the present and that summer of 1987. It's a moving, emotional book that captures all too well the highs and lows, the challenges and surprises that mental illness brings to a family, and how even years later these issues still surface and shape the course of people's lives. It's also the story of the fragility of human relationships, the lies we tell each other and ourselves, and the randomness of memory.
"I've heard that each time you remember something, the memory is rewritten by the neurons in your brain; that the memories you summon frequently are molded and smoothed—clay on the potter's wheel of your mind—while memories you leave buried can bubble up with photographic precision."
Sarah Cornwell is a tremendously talented writer. Her use of language was almost lyrical, as you can see by just a few of the passages I chose to incorporate into this review. While I had a little trouble at the start trying to figure out what the whole ghost idea was about, I was quickly hooked on the book, and as with so many books I love, was torn between wanting to devour it in one or two sittings, or wanting to savor it. (I chose the former, and don't regret it.) I look forward to seeing what's next in Cornwell's career, because this book shows that she has exceptional talent and promise.
Olivia Reed was raised by her dynamic and manic mother, Myla, a practicing psychic, in the Jersey Shore town of Ocean Vista. Fiercely protective of Olivia one minute, and disappearing to leave her home alone for days on end the next, Myla taught her daughter to believe in the powers of the universe. She also taught Olivia to believe in the ghosts of her twin baby sisters, who died before Olivia was born. Myla kept the nursery a shrine to these babies that never lived, even going so far as keeping baby food and diapers in the house, and leaving food on their highchairs.
The summer that Olivia turned 15, she saw her sisters for the first time, as teenagers, and believed that this sighting signified she was coming into her own powers, much like her mother. But when Myla disputes this vision, Olivia is motivated for the first time to challenge her mother's constraints and begin living a carefree life, determined to find out the truth of her sisters. This journey of discovery teaches Olivia about friendship, love, and loss, but also uncovers some truths she never expected, truths which lead to an irreparable rift in her family and change the course of her life.
"I left my mother here when she was sick and sad and alone. When I was fifteen, someone lowered a rope into my well, and I climbed it and pulled it up after me. I like to think that if my mother had waited two or three more years than she did, I would have grown up enough to come home to her. But I can't be sure."
Years later, Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her own teenage daughter, Carrie, and her nine-year-old son, Daniel, who has recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which served as the catalyst for the end of her marriage. Her return to her hometown sparks memories of that tumultuous summer, of how her life changed, and of the guilt she feels about her relationship with her mother. When Daniel suddenly disappears, the search for him forces her to examine the course her life has taken and how mental illness has shaped it, and the role her mother has played all along.
What I Had Before I Had You shifts back and forth between the present and that summer of 1987. It's a moving, emotional book that captures all too well the highs and lows, the challenges and surprises that mental illness brings to a family, and how even years later these issues still surface and shape the course of people's lives. It's also the story of the fragility of human relationships, the lies we tell each other and ourselves, and the randomness of memory.
"I've heard that each time you remember something, the memory is rewritten by the neurons in your brain; that the memories you summon frequently are molded and smoothed—clay on the potter's wheel of your mind—while memories you leave buried can bubble up with photographic precision."
Sarah Cornwell is a tremendously talented writer. Her use of language was almost lyrical, as you can see by just a few of the passages I chose to incorporate into this review. While I had a little trouble at the start trying to figure out what the whole ghost idea was about, I was quickly hooked on the book, and as with so many books I love, was torn between wanting to devour it in one or two sittings, or wanting to savor it. (I chose the former, and don't regret it.) I look forward to seeing what's next in Cornwell's career, because this book shows that she has exceptional talent and promise.
August 3, 2016
What I Had Before I Had You
By
Sarah Cornwell
Essentially...
This is the story of a family dealing with a history of bipolar disorder.
My thoughts after reading this book...
Olivia and her two children...Daniel and Carrie...are moving from Texas to the East Coast. Daniel...9 years old...has recently been diagnosed as being bipolar. Carrie...sullen...and with typical teen issues...just wants to be back home or with her father...not realizing that her father really doesn't want to be responsible for Carrie or her brother.
Olivia...strange...odd...sort of bipolar herself...takes everyone to the Jersey shore...Ocean Vista... where she grew up...rather unconventionally. Olivia's mother often disappeared and left her alone only to be checked on by some of her mother's boyfriends. Then there is the issue of the twin sisters...Olivia is always seeing them...as babies, swimming, older...but they aren't alive. Olivia's mother uses cards to "read" people and Olivia never knows when she is going to disappear, return, or where she goes. There is also a room in their house that is referred to as the nursery. No one is allowed in it. Olivia's mother even stocks baby food...totally weird.
Daniel disappears on that first day at the "shore" and is gone for hours. The book is one of flashbacks...finding Daniel and Olivia's early life with her mother and her eventual lack of contact with her mother.
Final thoughts...
This is a book that I just didn't get. I didn't like Olivia. I didn't like her daughter. I didn't even like Daniel. I was annoyed by the twin sitings and all the hidden meanings. I was annoyed by Olivia's mother. I was annoyed by Olivia's infidelities while she was married. This was one of those books that I just could not connect with. I didn't even like Olivia's husband and he wasn't even really an active character in the book.
Let's just say that this is a book I thought I would love but I didn't. It's not the writing or the author ...it's just a missing link for me. I could not get the magic out of this book that I needed. It had tons of elements I normally love but it just did not work for me. Again...the author did a lovely job of describing the "shore" and the way Olivia grew up...her issues with her mom...It just didn't appeal to me. We were not a match...
Not every book is the perfect fit.
By
Sarah Cornwell
Essentially...
This is the story of a family dealing with a history of bipolar disorder.
My thoughts after reading this book...
Olivia and her two children...Daniel and Carrie...are moving from Texas to the East Coast. Daniel...9 years old...has recently been diagnosed as being bipolar. Carrie...sullen...and with typical teen issues...just wants to be back home or with her father...not realizing that her father really doesn't want to be responsible for Carrie or her brother.
Olivia...strange...odd...sort of bipolar herself...takes everyone to the Jersey shore...Ocean Vista... where she grew up...rather unconventionally. Olivia's mother often disappeared and left her alone only to be checked on by some of her mother's boyfriends. Then there is the issue of the twin sisters...Olivia is always seeing them...as babies, swimming, older...but they aren't alive. Olivia's mother uses cards to "read" people and Olivia never knows when she is going to disappear, return, or where she goes. There is also a room in their house that is referred to as the nursery. No one is allowed in it. Olivia's mother even stocks baby food...totally weird.
Daniel disappears on that first day at the "shore" and is gone for hours. The book is one of flashbacks...finding Daniel and Olivia's early life with her mother and her eventual lack of contact with her mother.
Final thoughts...
This is a book that I just didn't get. I didn't like Olivia. I didn't like her daughter. I didn't even like Daniel. I was annoyed by the twin sitings and all the hidden meanings. I was annoyed by Olivia's mother. I was annoyed by Olivia's infidelities while she was married. This was one of those books that I just could not connect with. I didn't even like Olivia's husband and he wasn't even really an active character in the book.
Let's just say that this is a book I thought I would love but I didn't. It's not the writing or the author ...it's just a missing link for me. I could not get the magic out of this book that I needed. It had tons of elements I normally love but it just did not work for me. Again...the author did a lovely job of describing the "shore" and the way Olivia grew up...her issues with her mom...It just didn't appeal to me. We were not a match...
Not every book is the perfect fit.
January 31, 2014
Wow. I am blown away. I am whisked away. This is storytelling.
May 7, 2015
Sorry--just could NOT get into this book--gave it my best---can't do it.
January 8, 2014
What if all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty—God or whatever you call it—what if all this were part of your illness? Would you seek treatment? I have, and sometimes I wonder if the greatest passions are just out of my reach. And sometimes I am so grateful.
As Olivia Reed's family begins to fall helplessly apart in the wake of a dry affair and along with her recently diagnosed son's growing instability, she whisks her children away from their once-comforting ranch in Texas, doing the one thing she does best: run. She knows she's out of her mind going back to the place she left behind long ago, the place where she is certain her ghosts still reside, but in an act of desperation, she has no choice; she's hometown-bound, and the moment she steps onto the long-missed boardwalk and breathes in the salty ocean air, she knows she has made a mistake.
Losing her son, combined with the familiarity of Ocean Vista, conjures various memories—of her first love, of her best friends, and most painfully, of the one person she never fully forgave: her mother. What I Had Before I Had You exposes Olivia's life in its slow, harrowing full, alternating between her unfairly influenced, unsupervised childhood and the unsettling, untold present-day. It sweeps readers through the lonely adolescence, teenage rebellion, and liberal prominence of the 1970's and 80's, all the while describing the frenzied, unnerving search for Daniel in the present, before escalating to the fateful summer when everything changed—when Olivia first indulged in her art of abandonment.
Reading this book was an experience itself. The brief glances into Olivia's shaky childhood—the result of a mentally ill but in-denial mother and the burden of independence that came much too early—as well as the current frustrations over muting her disorder while simultaneously muting herself, are penetrating, completely eye-opening. Cornwell masterfully balances the struggles of hereditary bipolar disorder—not only a diagnosis, in Olivia's bloodline, but also an inheritance—and the struggles of being a mother—of being human—in this glittering narrative.
Olivia's past is told with a vintage filter, a dusky, dreamy undertone; deeply periodic and exquisitely lush, it involves Myla's divine convictions, sleepless nights spent alone, and the unaware suffering she felt as a child—both unmedicated and uninformed. This is the childhood that adult Olivia has tried so hard to forget, the childhood that her family now knows nothing about, and as it unravels with ruthless precision and targeted blows, it culminates into the story of what happened when she was fifteen—the summer of extreme emotions and ultimate betrayal.
I was even further impressed by how complex the storytelling is; it isn't simply a factual retelling, it isn't just a secret revealed. Olivia's past is narrated with the haze of an unreliable brain, a time-worn rememberer; readers are only given the version of events that have become Olivia's own, tempered by her imagination and improved by the million small revisions of memory. We will never know whether the emotions presented, as intense as they are, have been dulled by time, weathered by maturity, and this is the entire essence of the novel—this is Olivia's pain, which, through Cornwell's rare gift for detailing and piercing hearts, readers feel, themselves.
Pros
Emotionally searing // Evocative; beachy, warm setting // Nostalgic; memories of childhood revealed with a tragic veil of time // Writing is powerful and poetic // Biting, wounding, affecting // Insightful; psychologically and stunningly precise // Phenomenal incorporation of the past into the present // Historically and culturally rich, vivid
Cons
Slow start // Disorienting at times
Love
Pam never came after me. I don't blame her. I didn't look for her, either. I hear that she's a math teacher in West Orange. There are those people in your life who matter instantly, on another plane, and you have to marry them or kill them or run the hell away, you can't do it halfway. I hope her house is full of paintings. I hope somebody loves her.
We walk down the boardwalk, close to the storefronts, scanning the crowds for Daniel, his lime-green swim trunks, his gray T-shirt, his thick brown curls. Of course I would lose him here; this is where I lose people. My past is leaching into my present, and even in the midst of this panic, I feel a sensation of walking a few steps behind myself.
Verdict
Heartbreaking, silver-lined, and deeply meaningful, What I Had Before I Had You meditates on one mother's frantic search for her son, as well as on the even more hazardous search for herself. Sarah Cornwell elegantly constructs the thin membrane that separates childhood from parenthood in this luminous debut; as if slipping in and out of consciousness, the storylines alternate—unwinding slowly, lazily at first, and then gaining torque, and consequently, destructive power—a depiction of the debilitating effects of a mental illness such as bipolar disorder. This novel blends together the tenderly told story of a failed first love, the bittersweet flavor of resurrecting family ghosts and family history, and the delicate, learned craft of holding on and letting go—indeed, an intoxicating melange.
Rating: 9 out of 10 hearts (5 stars): Loved it! This book has a spot on my favorites shelf.
Source
Complimentary copy provided by publisher via tour publicist in exchange for an honest and unbiased review (thank you, Harper Collins and TLC!).
May 2, 2016
Something about this book just didn't click for me. I'm not sure why but I realized about halfway through that I could put the book down and walk away and probably not miss it/want to know the ending. Not a great sign. I think I had the most issues with the way the book was set up- alternating between the present day and a summer twenty years previous. The time periods would alternate and it was never totally clear which version of Olivia, the main character, I was reading. Even towards the end, I would still have to piece together which Olivia I was with. And that kind of made the reading experience less great.
I will say that the author handled and showcased living with a mental illness (bipolar disorder) rather well and the illness was never handled lightly. Some books add in a mental illness to have a character seem quirky or show how love can save someone with an illness (gag). So I was very happy to see that bipolar disorder added to the story in a meaningful way and was handled very well and intelligently. I have never experienced bipolar episodes personally but from the research I've done and the people I know with the disorder, I could tell that this was pretty faithful to real life experiences.
I will say that the author handled and showcased living with a mental illness (bipolar disorder) rather well and the illness was never handled lightly. Some books add in a mental illness to have a character seem quirky or show how love can save someone with an illness (gag). So I was very happy to see that bipolar disorder added to the story in a meaningful way and was handled very well and intelligently. I have never experienced bipolar episodes personally but from the research I've done and the people I know with the disorder, I could tell that this was pretty faithful to real life experiences.
October 7, 2016
I struggled to listen to this miserable (albeit well-written) story until I couldn't stand listening to it anymore.
Why did I hate it?
It is completely lacking in credibility. A mother with her teen-aged daughter and adolescent bipolar son are exploring the seedy beach boardwalk arcades when she loses her son -- and then in the midst of her search for him she starts tripping down memory lane. ... REALLY?!
Even in the midst of her own bi-polar haze would even a mentally deranged mother take that moment to go into a lengthy review of her own life history? Perhaps a series of fleeting images of good times gone bad in this place of her past -- but seriously: more than half of the first half of the book? I'm not buying it -- too contrived.
That said, the writing was good. Had she chosen a different vehicle to carry her reminisces it might've even been a good story, but this one didn't work.
Why did I hate it?
It is completely lacking in credibility. A mother with her teen-aged daughter and adolescent bipolar son are exploring the seedy beach boardwalk arcades when she loses her son -- and then in the midst of her search for him she starts tripping down memory lane. ... REALLY?!
Even in the midst of her own bi-polar haze would even a mentally deranged mother take that moment to go into a lengthy review of her own life history? Perhaps a series of fleeting images of good times gone bad in this place of her past -- but seriously: more than half of the first half of the book? I'm not buying it -- too contrived.
That said, the writing was good. Had she chosen a different vehicle to carry her reminisces it might've even been a good story, but this one didn't work.
September 10, 2014
I seem to be reading books these days about mental illness. Not intentionally, but maybe . . . wait, . . . I'm not going there!!!
I kept waiting for some big reveal or something momentous to happen, but nothing. The book just seemed to ramble on and on. Maybe that was the author's intent ~ giving insight to the mind of mental illness.
I kept waiting for some big reveal or something momentous to happen, but nothing. The book just seemed to ramble on and on. Maybe that was the author's intent ~ giving insight to the mind of mental illness.
September 12, 2015
this was a good read that was sometimes hard to follow. past, present and dream Olivia can get a little confusing at times. i really want to know what happened to Blanche, did she die???
the timeline jumps around. i wish the story was told in a more linear fashion but maybe Cornwell opted for this method to reflect Olivia's bipolar disorder. things that make you go hummmm.
the timeline jumps around. i wish the story was told in a more linear fashion but maybe Cornwell opted for this method to reflect Olivia's bipolar disorder. things that make you go hummmm.
April 27, 2017
A beautifully written first novel that captures life as a local at the Jersey Shore. Bipolar disease factors into the plot prominently, but it's done so fairly and accurately. I'm looking forward to Cornwell's next novel.
February 10, 2018
Don't waste your time on this book
January 28, 2019
dnf. I lost interest. There's too many good books out there to waste time on bad ones.
January 30, 2020
The story pulls you in from the beginning of the main character as an adult, Olivia, losing her 9-year old, Daniel, who has bipolar. Already, I could relate to both these characters, both having suffered from bipolar and also someone who came from a crazy home life. As she moves back to Ocean Vista, where she is from and re-lives her life as a teenager with a psychic and also bipolar or moody mother. It is a high-concept story with complex rich characters. Set in an interesting time of the late eighties, where kids and teens were given more freedom and without being chained to media. Yet, her life in the past is a thriller mystery. Can't say too much without giving away spoilers. But I loved this story. Thanks for writing it.
Please write more.
Please write more.
August 27, 2021
Amazing book..read it in less than a day..
February 25, 2014
Review copy from Harper Collins.
I admit I received this book before Christmas, and really should have got around to reading it before now; such is the chaos of my tbr. I don’t think I have seen any other reviews of this book – although I may have missed some – so I didn’t have any expectations of this debut novel; but I can say that I enjoyed it a great deal. Sarah Cornwall is a very good writer, there is an excellent sense of place and Cornwall is adept at creating believably flawed characters.
When Olivia was just fifteen she left her home and her difficult damaged mother on the New Jersey shore for New York. Twenty years later, Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her two children, teenage Carrie and nine year old Daniel – recently diagnosed with early onset Bi-Polar disorder.
Olivia is instantly swamped by memories of the past – and particularly that last summer before she left – and then in a moment of distraction she loses sight of Daniel. As Olivia and Carrie begin a desperate search for Daniel – Olivia is forced to revisit her past, and the events of that summer. This was the time when she first caught sight of the ghosts of her twin sisters, and believed she was coming in to her gift – inherited from her beautiful, psychic mother Myla, whose erratic behaviour has made her an infamously crazy local figure, and whose occasional disappearances leave young Olivia to tend for herself.
“We were so much along together that my memories of childhood are almost entirely of my mother and the ways she animated our house: the folk songs she sang while she dried the dishes, the fuzzy rings her wineglasses left on all surfaces, books left open to their cracked spines. We were never bored, unless it was our pleasure to be bored. We went on adventures; spy missions, animal rescues, picketing campaigns for environmental groups, random acts of kindness. On Saturdays we parked by the boardwalk and sat in the Atlantic surf, eating pizza gritty with sand. She said she could hear talk underneath talk, and when I was very young, I trusted that my thoughts were laid out for her to read like a played hand of cards. As I grew, I found I was wrong – that I could hold my thoughts away from her, and this discovery made me bolder but lonelier, too.”
At home Olivia must clean the nursery – her mother keeps set up in memory of the twin sisters she lost at birth, while Myla herself continues to buy baby food and nappies for them. Olivia is aware there are things about her mother she doesn’t understand, things her mother’s only friend James, who is always there to pick up the pieces, seems to know all too well. Set against a backdrop of the New Jersey shore – the world the tourists don’t see – and the heady atmosphere of 1980’s teenage excesses; Olivia experiments with drink, drugs and sex sneaking out of her house and staying out all night with the new friends she made the night she climbed up a rollercoaster. When she discovers her “ghost sisters” are real girls – Olivia sets out to find out more about them, a quest that ultimately takes her away from her old life completely.
The story is necessarily told in two time frames, a device fairly over used in fiction I suppose, but which works well. The reader clearly sees how the troubled adolescent becomes the imperfect but basically good parent. The portrayal of Olivia’s struggle with Daniel’s condition, Carrie’s difficult adolescence and her marriage breakdown is extremely well done, brilliantly showing how parenthood is never easy, and how parents desperate for a diagnosis for their child suffer themselves. Olivia is not always entirely sympathetic; she is real, flawed and constantly learning. ‘What I had before I Had You’ is a haunting story of difficult relationships between parents and children and gives a poignant and illuminating insight into the effects of bi-polar disorder on three generations of a family. This is a very well written novel – which surely heralds more great things to come from this writer.
I admit I received this book before Christmas, and really should have got around to reading it before now; such is the chaos of my tbr. I don’t think I have seen any other reviews of this book – although I may have missed some – so I didn’t have any expectations of this debut novel; but I can say that I enjoyed it a great deal. Sarah Cornwall is a very good writer, there is an excellent sense of place and Cornwall is adept at creating believably flawed characters.
When Olivia was just fifteen she left her home and her difficult damaged mother on the New Jersey shore for New York. Twenty years later, Olivia returns to Ocean Vista with her two children, teenage Carrie and nine year old Daniel – recently diagnosed with early onset Bi-Polar disorder.
Olivia is instantly swamped by memories of the past – and particularly that last summer before she left – and then in a moment of distraction she loses sight of Daniel. As Olivia and Carrie begin a desperate search for Daniel – Olivia is forced to revisit her past, and the events of that summer. This was the time when she first caught sight of the ghosts of her twin sisters, and believed she was coming in to her gift – inherited from her beautiful, psychic mother Myla, whose erratic behaviour has made her an infamously crazy local figure, and whose occasional disappearances leave young Olivia to tend for herself.
“We were so much along together that my memories of childhood are almost entirely of my mother and the ways she animated our house: the folk songs she sang while she dried the dishes, the fuzzy rings her wineglasses left on all surfaces, books left open to their cracked spines. We were never bored, unless it was our pleasure to be bored. We went on adventures; spy missions, animal rescues, picketing campaigns for environmental groups, random acts of kindness. On Saturdays we parked by the boardwalk and sat in the Atlantic surf, eating pizza gritty with sand. She said she could hear talk underneath talk, and when I was very young, I trusted that my thoughts were laid out for her to read like a played hand of cards. As I grew, I found I was wrong – that I could hold my thoughts away from her, and this discovery made me bolder but lonelier, too.”
At home Olivia must clean the nursery – her mother keeps set up in memory of the twin sisters she lost at birth, while Myla herself continues to buy baby food and nappies for them. Olivia is aware there are things about her mother she doesn’t understand, things her mother’s only friend James, who is always there to pick up the pieces, seems to know all too well. Set against a backdrop of the New Jersey shore – the world the tourists don’t see – and the heady atmosphere of 1980’s teenage excesses; Olivia experiments with drink, drugs and sex sneaking out of her house and staying out all night with the new friends she made the night she climbed up a rollercoaster. When she discovers her “ghost sisters” are real girls – Olivia sets out to find out more about them, a quest that ultimately takes her away from her old life completely.
The story is necessarily told in two time frames, a device fairly over used in fiction I suppose, but which works well. The reader clearly sees how the troubled adolescent becomes the imperfect but basically good parent. The portrayal of Olivia’s struggle with Daniel’s condition, Carrie’s difficult adolescence and her marriage breakdown is extremely well done, brilliantly showing how parenthood is never easy, and how parents desperate for a diagnosis for their child suffer themselves. Olivia is not always entirely sympathetic; she is real, flawed and constantly learning. ‘What I had before I Had You’ is a haunting story of difficult relationships between parents and children and gives a poignant and illuminating insight into the effects of bi-polar disorder on three generations of a family. This is a very well written novel – which surely heralds more great things to come from this writer.
May 13, 2014
Sarah Cornwell's debut novel
What I Had Before I Had You
respectfully addresses the sensitive and confronting subject matter of mental illness - bi polar disorder specifically.
Cornwell offers insight into an imperfect family dealing with three generations of bi polar disorder. Olivia the main character reflects on her abstract childhood and her present life, triggered by a visit to her hometown and by the disappearance of her son Daniel. Memories overwhelm her as she comes to terms with herself as well as her past, present life and family.
Cornwell's rhapsodic ethereal prose tugs at the reader's attention and you find yourself immersed in this compelling narrative on such an averted topic.
As we join Olivia Reed on her introspective journey we learn of her suffering anything but a conventional childhood, unknowingly to Olivia her mom was in the clutches of bi polar disorder in which her mom elected not to take prescribed medications. Can you imagine dealing with a bi polar parent and not knowing the source of the peculiar behavior? Puberty is tough but kept in the dark of your mom's illness makes life even more of a challenge. As a young teen Olivia starts demonstrating more than your typical rebellion, she deals with unknowing manic episodes exposing her to numerous risks. Years later she discovers she is bi polar as well, explaining her thoughts and behaviors she dealt with for quite some time. Now Olivia helps her young son Daniel deal with his early onset bi polar diagnosis.
It's painful to learn of Olivia's numerous discoveries of her mom, herself her life in general. Such a tender age and she was never really able to have a childhood. Dealing with her own diagnosis as she finds her way is bittersweet.
I found it difficult to warm up to Olivia. She failed to exude any type of warmth or emotional attachment. I felt a great deal of empathy towards her but an overall warmth for her was lost. Further character development might have made a difference but I chalk it up to lack of chemistry. Olivia's cold, stoic demeanor took away from my enjoying the entire reading experience. If Olivia showed more feeling the book would have gone from good to great, but her blandness was the deal breaker.
What I Had Before I Had You encompasses forgiveness, guilt, memories, parent-child relationships and mental illness given in a dignified manner. Impressed with such a neglected topic shows undeniable moxie from Cornwell. I look forward to this budding authors future work.
���Here is what I would say to those people who would judge her, what I would say to myself on some days: What if all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty���God or whatever you call it���what if all this were part of your illness? Would you seek treatment? I have, and sometimes I wonder if the greatest passions are just out of my reach. And sometimes I am so grateful."
Needless to say this book allows for numerous discussions on a supple subject matter, a topic that should be exposed and discussed openly without stigma, shame or fear. Educational read all should add to their reading list or group.
A copy was provided in exchange for an honest review
Cornwell offers insight into an imperfect family dealing with three generations of bi polar disorder. Olivia the main character reflects on her abstract childhood and her present life, triggered by a visit to her hometown and by the disappearance of her son Daniel. Memories overwhelm her as she comes to terms with herself as well as her past, present life and family.
Cornwell's rhapsodic ethereal prose tugs at the reader's attention and you find yourself immersed in this compelling narrative on such an averted topic.
As we join Olivia Reed on her introspective journey we learn of her suffering anything but a conventional childhood, unknowingly to Olivia her mom was in the clutches of bi polar disorder in which her mom elected not to take prescribed medications. Can you imagine dealing with a bi polar parent and not knowing the source of the peculiar behavior? Puberty is tough but kept in the dark of your mom's illness makes life even more of a challenge. As a young teen Olivia starts demonstrating more than your typical rebellion, she deals with unknowing manic episodes exposing her to numerous risks. Years later she discovers she is bi polar as well, explaining her thoughts and behaviors she dealt with for quite some time. Now Olivia helps her young son Daniel deal with his early onset bi polar diagnosis.
It's painful to learn of Olivia's numerous discoveries of her mom, herself her life in general. Such a tender age and she was never really able to have a childhood. Dealing with her own diagnosis as she finds her way is bittersweet.
I found it difficult to warm up to Olivia. She failed to exude any type of warmth or emotional attachment. I felt a great deal of empathy towards her but an overall warmth for her was lost. Further character development might have made a difference but I chalk it up to lack of chemistry. Olivia's cold, stoic demeanor took away from my enjoying the entire reading experience. If Olivia showed more feeling the book would have gone from good to great, but her blandness was the deal breaker.
What I Had Before I Had You encompasses forgiveness, guilt, memories, parent-child relationships and mental illness given in a dignified manner. Impressed with such a neglected topic shows undeniable moxie from Cornwell. I look forward to this budding authors future work.
���Here is what I would say to those people who would judge her, what I would say to myself on some days: What if all the transcendent moments of your life, the sound-track moments, the radiant detail, the gleaming thing at the center of life that loves you, that loves beauty���God or whatever you call it���what if all this were part of your illness? Would you seek treatment? I have, and sometimes I wonder if the greatest passions are just out of my reach. And sometimes I am so grateful."
Needless to say this book allows for numerous discussions on a supple subject matter, a topic that should be exposed and discussed openly without stigma, shame or fear. Educational read all should add to their reading list or group.
A copy was provided in exchange for an honest review
March 19, 2014
Full Disclosure: I know the author (she is a friend of my wife's).
Another Full Disclosure: This is *really* not my kind of book. I never would have picked it up if I didn't have a social connection to the author.
These two things together mean that you really shouldn't read this "review" at all. In fact, you really shouldn't read any of my "reviews" as I don't write them as "reviews" but rather just as a couple of notes to future me to remind me that I read a particular book and vaguely what I thought about it.
All that being said, I really enjoyed the writing in this book. There were interesting characters and the construction of the book was effective at letting us in to the primary story being told (that of an eventful summer of a teenage girl living with a mother who is bipolar). Her story is presented with some effective "mystery" elements such as what happened to/who are her sisters? These mystery elements keep plot oriented readers invested in the story. Readers who enjoy spending time with interesting characters will probably also enjoy the ones in this book, but I can't really comment on that because that is not something that really drives me to read.
The framing story of an adult woman (the teenage girl all grown up) with her two kids revisiting her childhood town is probably effective in giving weight to the teenage story, but is less effective as its own story. There is an attempt to add a mystery element involving the disappearance of one of her kids in the first chapter and the subsequent search for that child. But this does not really work as a mystery because it mostly just seems to be an excuse for the woman to relive and think about her time as a teenager and think about those connections. There are few to no "clues" about what happened to the child and no herrings (red or otherwise), for plot oriented readers to get invested in.
Everyone's experience with bipolar disorder is probably different. That being said, I did not feel that the authors description or rumination on the disorder was helpful to my understanding of the disease or its nature. But that is probably because I bring a lot of baggage to that particular question and am not evaluating the book as it is.
I believe that those people who are interested in character and relationship development will enjoy the conclusion and the way it ties the various stories together. I felt the ending worked well on that level but personally enjoy more action focused resolutions (this one involved the transformation of a character internally).
Three stars for my personal enjoyment (not my kind of book and, unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it about as much as I might expect from the get go because I don't read these kinds of books generally for a good reason). Plus another star because, I *did* enjoy large parts of the novel in spite of my general dislike for the genre of novel it is! If that isn't a solid recommendation, I don't know what is.
Another Full Disclosure: This is *really* not my kind of book. I never would have picked it up if I didn't have a social connection to the author.
These two things together mean that you really shouldn't read this "review" at all. In fact, you really shouldn't read any of my "reviews" as I don't write them as "reviews" but rather just as a couple of notes to future me to remind me that I read a particular book and vaguely what I thought about it.
All that being said, I really enjoyed the writing in this book. There were interesting characters and the construction of the book was effective at letting us in to the primary story being told (that of an eventful summer of a teenage girl living with a mother who is bipolar). Her story is presented with some effective "mystery" elements such as what happened to/who are her sisters? These mystery elements keep plot oriented readers invested in the story. Readers who enjoy spending time with interesting characters will probably also enjoy the ones in this book, but I can't really comment on that because that is not something that really drives me to read.
The framing story of an adult woman (the teenage girl all grown up) with her two kids revisiting her childhood town is probably effective in giving weight to the teenage story, but is less effective as its own story. There is an attempt to add a mystery element involving the disappearance of one of her kids in the first chapter and the subsequent search for that child. But this does not really work as a mystery because it mostly just seems to be an excuse for the woman to relive and think about her time as a teenager and think about those connections. There are few to no "clues" about what happened to the child and no herrings (red or otherwise), for plot oriented readers to get invested in.
Everyone's experience with bipolar disorder is probably different. That being said, I did not feel that the authors description or rumination on the disorder was helpful to my understanding of the disease or its nature. But that is probably because I bring a lot of baggage to that particular question and am not evaluating the book as it is.
I believe that those people who are interested in character and relationship development will enjoy the conclusion and the way it ties the various stories together. I felt the ending worked well on that level but personally enjoy more action focused resolutions (this one involved the transformation of a character internally).
Three stars for my personal enjoyment (not my kind of book and, unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it about as much as I might expect from the get go because I don't read these kinds of books generally for a good reason). Plus another star because, I *did* enjoy large parts of the novel in spite of my general dislike for the genre of novel it is! If that isn't a solid recommendation, I don't know what is.
March 9, 2014
What I Had Before I Had You is the achingly lyrical tale of mental illness and its impact on family. At moments beautiful or tragic or beautifully tragic, this novel is bitterly sweet and tangibly details the painfulness of adolescence and mother-child relationships.
Olivia, the narrator, grew up in Ocean Vista, NJ with her equal parts distracted and devoted mother Myla. Myla reads palms, tarot cards, and the stars, which keeps her vacillating between cool, new-age mom and crazy, off-the-wall mom. She keeps a nursery for the twins she miscarried at age 19, and stocks the kitchen with baby food that she feeds them daily in the dining room's twin high chairs. Myla disappears for days or weeks at a time, and will not tell her daughter where she had been... what Myla had before she had Olivia. This dramatically strange life is Olivia's normal.
Now, Olivia is an adult, struggling with her own illness and that of her son, Daniel. Daniel's young break from reality triggers a flood of memories to overwhelm Olivia... what she had before she had Daniel, and the novel's bulk.
At times, I thought Cornwall spent too much time in the past, and not enough in the present, but by the book's end, she had hooked me into being more invested in Olivia's adolescence than her adulthood. The teenage acts of rebellion are so real I feel like you can touch them, and I think that is what ended up pulling me in. I felt both anger and sympathy for Myla's illness, and for Olivia's reactions to it. This book is sad, and doesn't have a happily-ever-after, but it is beautiful, too, and I definitely recommend it.
Favorite quotes:
"When I first told her that I'm into photography, she said that photography is not an art because 'there are insufficient fumes.' She paints with oils because, she says, acrylic is for pussies. Your art should literally kill you, she says" (85).
"My rebellion had started so quietly that it surprised me, at moments like this, to find myself sprinting in the dark away from a warm house" (115).
"Worse, she would understand the pang I feel when I smell Jake's dark boy-smell as he leans in to kiss me, and this new desire to feel his particular hands on the curves of my neck and the pooling places behind my collarbones. She would know just what I mean when I say that this feeling struck me fast and hard, the stroke of a hammer on a nail" (117).
Olivia, the narrator, grew up in Ocean Vista, NJ with her equal parts distracted and devoted mother Myla. Myla reads palms, tarot cards, and the stars, which keeps her vacillating between cool, new-age mom and crazy, off-the-wall mom. She keeps a nursery for the twins she miscarried at age 19, and stocks the kitchen with baby food that she feeds them daily in the dining room's twin high chairs. Myla disappears for days or weeks at a time, and will not tell her daughter where she had been... what Myla had before she had Olivia. This dramatically strange life is Olivia's normal.
Now, Olivia is an adult, struggling with her own illness and that of her son, Daniel. Daniel's young break from reality triggers a flood of memories to overwhelm Olivia... what she had before she had Daniel, and the novel's bulk.
At times, I thought Cornwall spent too much time in the past, and not enough in the present, but by the book's end, she had hooked me into being more invested in Olivia's adolescence than her adulthood. The teenage acts of rebellion are so real I feel like you can touch them, and I think that is what ended up pulling me in. I felt both anger and sympathy for Myla's illness, and for Olivia's reactions to it. This book is sad, and doesn't have a happily-ever-after, but it is beautiful, too, and I definitely recommend it.
Favorite quotes:
"When I first told her that I'm into photography, she said that photography is not an art because 'there are insufficient fumes.' She paints with oils because, she says, acrylic is for pussies. Your art should literally kill you, she says" (85).
"My rebellion had started so quietly that it surprised me, at moments like this, to find myself sprinting in the dark away from a warm house" (115).
"Worse, she would understand the pang I feel when I smell Jake's dark boy-smell as he leans in to kiss me, and this new desire to feel his particular hands on the curves of my neck and the pooling places behind my collarbones. She would know just what I mean when I say that this feeling struck me fast and hard, the stroke of a hammer on a nail" (117).
December 11, 2013
It’s difficult enough being a fifteen year old girl with a normal mother, but what if your mother is bipolar and you seem to be exhibiting symptoms yourself? “What I Had Before I Had You”, a debut novel by Sarah Cornwell, illuminates the lonely life of Olivia Reed who is in just that situation. The story is told by both young Olivia the summer she is fifteen as she navigates the world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n role in the sea-side tourist community of Ocean Vista, while her mother is either totally absent or doing crazy things. This viewpoint alternates with older Olivia as she revisits Ocean Vista with her teenaged daughter and her nine-year-old son who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; they are relocating from Austin to New York after a divorce.
How “crazy” is Olivia’s mother? Well, she buys baby food and diapers for her twin daughters who died a birth; Olivia is expected to keep her dead sisters’ nursery clean and tidy. Olivia knows this is nuts, but one day she spots two young girls who she believes are her sisters – now grown up. Is she hallucinating? Is she going nuts, too?
I found the sections about Olivia’s dealing with her son’s disorder as she must control her own, to be very poignant. Cornwell provides excellent insight into the world of parents who are raising challenging children; the stares and the disapproval from the on-looking and often misunderstanding public can be harsh and cruel. I know that this novel inspired me to be more compassionate about situations I don’t understand and may be misinterpreting.
Equally poignant is young Olivia’s yearning for normalcy and for a parent who can be counted on. As is the case for most adolescents, she desired BOTH independence and also guidance and boundaries. When she finds a pack of teenagers to hang with over the summer, she thinks she has found people who care about her and who will fill the void; but they are just kids, too.
I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend this amazing first novel by Sarah Cornwell and I will most definitely be looking for her next offering.
How “crazy” is Olivia’s mother? Well, she buys baby food and diapers for her twin daughters who died a birth; Olivia is expected to keep her dead sisters’ nursery clean and tidy. Olivia knows this is nuts, but one day she spots two young girls who she believes are her sisters – now grown up. Is she hallucinating? Is she going nuts, too?
I found the sections about Olivia’s dealing with her son’s disorder as she must control her own, to be very poignant. Cornwell provides excellent insight into the world of parents who are raising challenging children; the stares and the disapproval from the on-looking and often misunderstanding public can be harsh and cruel. I know that this novel inspired me to be more compassionate about situations I don’t understand and may be misinterpreting.
Equally poignant is young Olivia’s yearning for normalcy and for a parent who can be counted on. As is the case for most adolescents, she desired BOTH independence and also guidance and boundaries. When she finds a pack of teenagers to hang with over the summer, she thinks she has found people who care about her and who will fill the void; but they are just kids, too.
I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend this amazing first novel by Sarah Cornwell and I will most definitely be looking for her next offering.
December 30, 2013
This novel take place in two primary eras, a pivotal summer for teenage Olivia, and a close-to-present-day time when Olivia and her own children pass through her childhood town, a part of the process of ending a marriage.
Young Olivia knows her mom is different. She tells fortunes, reads palms, and speaks to her "twins." Olivia has been told her would-be-older-sisters died in infancy. There is a lot of turmoil in the home that is hard to grasp until it becomes clear that mom is severely bipolar and there are early signs in Olivia as well. This is a summer of rebellion and pulling away as Olivia also tries to figure out who she is, and who she could be apart from her mom.
In the latter year sections (woven throughout), Olivia's marriage is fading. Her daughter Chloe appears to be fading a bit too as nine year ol Daniel is showing signs of a very significant, early onset, bipolar disorder. When the trio stops for a breather, Daniel goes missing. Present day Carrie retraces some of the important places of her youth and revisits an old friend as she, along with police, search for the boy.
Don't just call this a novel about bipolarism. It is that, and notable for looking at three different manifestations of a broadly applied label, but it is also about family, both those of blood and those of other bonds.
I read this Harper early release in exchange for my unbiased review. It was a good book and I enjoyed most of it, but I'm not sure that it is going to be one I seek out to read again and I would likely struggle to describe the novel six months from now if only given the book's title. 3.5 stars, rounding down b/c it just didn't resonate with me. Could be good for the right book club or an airplane ride, but can't picture shoving it into someone's hands as a must read.
Young Olivia knows her mom is different. She tells fortunes, reads palms, and speaks to her "twins." Olivia has been told her would-be-older-sisters died in infancy. There is a lot of turmoil in the home that is hard to grasp until it becomes clear that mom is severely bipolar and there are early signs in Olivia as well. This is a summer of rebellion and pulling away as Olivia also tries to figure out who she is, and who she could be apart from her mom.
In the latter year sections (woven throughout), Olivia's marriage is fading. Her daughter Chloe appears to be fading a bit too as nine year ol Daniel is showing signs of a very significant, early onset, bipolar disorder. When the trio stops for a breather, Daniel goes missing. Present day Carrie retraces some of the important places of her youth and revisits an old friend as she, along with police, search for the boy.
Don't just call this a novel about bipolarism. It is that, and notable for looking at three different manifestations of a broadly applied label, but it is also about family, both those of blood and those of other bonds.
I read this Harper early release in exchange for my unbiased review. It was a good book and I enjoyed most of it, but I'm not sure that it is going to be one I seek out to read again and I would likely struggle to describe the novel six months from now if only given the book's title. 3.5 stars, rounding down b/c it just didn't resonate with me. Could be good for the right book club or an airplane ride, but can't picture shoving it into someone's hands as a must read.
September 9, 2014
I won this from a goodreads, giveaway. I would like to thank Goodreads and the publisher for a copy of this book. Receiving this book for free, has in no way, influenced my opinions.
I really enjoyed this book. I might be biased since I'm a Psychology major. This book is about bi-polar disorder and the manic hi/lows that go with it. This book is a coming of age story, about Olivia who has to grow up with her mothers (Myla) manic episodes. She has to deal with living on her own and growing up with a mother who is unstable and unpredictable. Later in life, she is diagnosed with bi-polar and the gene is also given to her son. So she not only has to deal with it herself, she has to help her son.
I was just so engrossed in the story and getting the details of Olivia's story. She has to learn to fend for herself and never knows where her mother disappears to for days or weeks at a time. She then has some conflicting situations with her mom that force her into a bad crowd. She immediately embraces to life of drugs, sex and alcohol to feel "free." Throughout the whole book you don't know who to feel sorry for. I would feel so bad for Olivia but then something else would happen and I would feel bad for Myla. They were both struggling with so much on their own that they couldn't reach each other.
The story alternates between her coming of age story with her present story. She is dealing with a divorce and moving from Texas to NY. On her way, she stops at her birth place to take her kids to the ocean. While this is happening, you get her story with how she is dealing with her life and her son's diagnosis. All the while, she's trying to deal with her guilty feelings for abandoning her mother years ago.
This was a great story and it really opens your eyes to the disorder and how it affects everyone in a family.
I really enjoyed this book. I might be biased since I'm a Psychology major. This book is about bi-polar disorder and the manic hi/lows that go with it. This book is a coming of age story, about Olivia who has to grow up with her mothers (Myla) manic episodes. She has to deal with living on her own and growing up with a mother who is unstable and unpredictable. Later in life, she is diagnosed with bi-polar and the gene is also given to her son. So she not only has to deal with it herself, she has to help her son.
I was just so engrossed in the story and getting the details of Olivia's story. She has to learn to fend for herself and never knows where her mother disappears to for days or weeks at a time. She then has some conflicting situations with her mom that force her into a bad crowd. She immediately embraces to life of drugs, sex and alcohol to feel "free." Throughout the whole book you don't know who to feel sorry for. I would feel so bad for Olivia but then something else would happen and I would feel bad for Myla. They were both struggling with so much on their own that they couldn't reach each other.
The story alternates between her coming of age story with her present story. She is dealing with a divorce and moving from Texas to NY. On her way, she stops at her birth place to take her kids to the ocean. While this is happening, you get her story with how she is dealing with her life and her son's diagnosis. All the while, she's trying to deal with her guilty feelings for abandoning her mother years ago.
This was a great story and it really opens your eyes to the disorder and how it affects everyone in a family.
July 19, 2014
I received an uncorrected proof from the publisher in exchange for a review.
This is a 5-star book not because I fell completely head over heels in love with it but because it's beautiful in a way I can't describe. It's unlike anything I have ever read -the main reason being that it largely focused on bipolar disorder and what it can do to a person.
What I Had Before I Had You is about a woman named Olivia who has recently been divorced from her husband, Sam. With her two kids, Carrie and Daniel, she is visiting her hometown, a place she had stayed far away from for two decades. Being back begins to spark all these memories of the fateful summer she spent in Ocean Vista with her "psychic" mother who is bipolar. She doesn't notice when her nine-year-old son disappears from her side. During her desperate search to find him, memories that she has tried so hard to forget reappear.
Before reading this, I wasn't extremely knowledgeable about bipolar disease. I knew that it could affect how a person thinks and acts, but that was pretty much it. It was interesting to see how it affected 3 generations differently (Olivia, her mother, and her recently diagnosed son).
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a thoughtful insight on bipolar disorder, or simply an easy, great read.
This is a 5-star book not because I fell completely head over heels in love with it but because it's beautiful in a way I can't describe. It's unlike anything I have ever read -the main reason being that it largely focused on bipolar disorder and what it can do to a person.
What I Had Before I Had You is about a woman named Olivia who has recently been divorced from her husband, Sam. With her two kids, Carrie and Daniel, she is visiting her hometown, a place she had stayed far away from for two decades. Being back begins to spark all these memories of the fateful summer she spent in Ocean Vista with her "psychic" mother who is bipolar. She doesn't notice when her nine-year-old son disappears from her side. During her desperate search to find him, memories that she has tried so hard to forget reappear.
Before reading this, I wasn't extremely knowledgeable about bipolar disease. I knew that it could affect how a person thinks and acts, but that was pretty much it. It was interesting to see how it affected 3 generations differently (Olivia, her mother, and her recently diagnosed son).
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a thoughtful insight on bipolar disorder, or simply an easy, great read.
November 26, 2014
The book is a well crafted narrative switching between the present (when the narrator is visiting her home town on the Jersey shore and her 9 year old son disappears as they walk on a board walk) and the past (during the narrator's early adolescence). There is a long running history of mental illness in her family, with grandfather, mother, narrator and son all affected with various levels of response to therapy and success at life. There are complicated family relations that are even more difficult for the reader to understand because of the reliability of various characters.
There are links to various locations (NYC, Austin, TX, and the Jersey shore) that readers familiar with them will catch insider references ('clouds of grackles in the trees' 'time slowed down, people danced steps that didn't exist in other states'). Similarly, there are links to the alternative thinking (genius?) of bipolar disease that readers familiar with them will also catch glimpses of the familiar. Although incredibly sad in some places, there is an underlying resilience in the narrator and confidence that she, with the help of her family and friends, will overcome challenges that mental illness provides and will live well.
There are links to various locations (NYC, Austin, TX, and the Jersey shore) that readers familiar with them will catch insider references ('clouds of grackles in the trees' 'time slowed down, people danced steps that didn't exist in other states'). Similarly, there are links to the alternative thinking (genius?) of bipolar disease that readers familiar with them will also catch glimpses of the familiar. Although incredibly sad in some places, there is an underlying resilience in the narrator and confidence that she, with the help of her family and friends, will overcome challenges that mental illness provides and will live well.
January 9, 2014
There is so much to appreciate in this book, and it is staggering to think this is a debut. Connections between generations and how each handles the "family disease" of bi-polar disorder provide the underlying theme. Present is the view society has of the syndrome, its degrees of severity, its affects on those around the central figure, and how the changing nature of treatment has resulted. This is also a family saga with the usual secrets and shames, as well as a coming of age account. There is much wealth of detail in the beautiful prose: "...laundry lines crisscrossed the sky. I picture time as transparencies, see myself lifting one layer after another away...until there is this one clothesline left...This is how time works: a simplification of things, a peeling away of layers of confusion until the present is a clean and simple refinement of history's clutter." And I just loved this line: "Kids who grow up without animals turn into cold people. They turn into bankers."
Highly recommended
Highly recommended
December 15, 2013
I really wanted to give this story a 3 but the story had something to say about families that deal with Bi-polar and how it can affect the people around them.
I know a few people with Bi-Polar but have never been around them for any length of time to know what it really does to them and the people close to them.
The story line deals with numerous family members with the disease. The whole family appears to have the disease. It is a good, somewhat of a easy read but very consuming.
Olivia, see's the past, her dead infant sister's as grown ups, and other events that could have taken place in the future.
That's why I almost gave it a 3 -- because the story goes back and forth and back and forth, sometimes unexpectantly.
Yes, I'm glad I read the book by Sarah Cornwell. After you finish and digest it ---- it all comes around and make sense.
Forgot to add that this book was recieved as a first reader book from Goodreads.com and the Author - Sarah Cornwell.
I know a few people with Bi-Polar but have never been around them for any length of time to know what it really does to them and the people close to them.
The story line deals with numerous family members with the disease. The whole family appears to have the disease. It is a good, somewhat of a easy read but very consuming.
Olivia, see's the past, her dead infant sister's as grown ups, and other events that could have taken place in the future.
That's why I almost gave it a 3 -- because the story goes back and forth and back and forth, sometimes unexpectantly.
Yes, I'm glad I read the book by Sarah Cornwell. After you finish and digest it ---- it all comes around and make sense.
Forgot to add that this book was recieved as a first reader book from Goodreads.com and the Author - Sarah Cornwell.
August 15, 2014
I won this book as a FirstRead.
Olivia Reed is recently divorced and on her way to New York City with her teenage daughter and 9-year-old son when she takes them to see Ocean Vista, New Jersey, where she grew up. Coming back to Ocean Vista brings back all kinds of memories from Olivia's last summer there. Engulfed in thoughts of her past, Olivia doesn't notice her son, Daniel, disappear. The chapters alternate between adult Olivia searching for her son, who was recently diagnosed as bipolar, and 15-year-old Olivia growing up with her eccentric mom.
The plot was intriguing, especially the part about 15-year-old Olivia just learning to rebel against the way she has been raised. The author did a good job of presenting bipolar depression as it manifested across the generations of Olivia's family. This was a great debut novel; I look forward to more of her novels.
Olivia Reed is recently divorced and on her way to New York City with her teenage daughter and 9-year-old son when she takes them to see Ocean Vista, New Jersey, where she grew up. Coming back to Ocean Vista brings back all kinds of memories from Olivia's last summer there. Engulfed in thoughts of her past, Olivia doesn't notice her son, Daniel, disappear. The chapters alternate between adult Olivia searching for her son, who was recently diagnosed as bipolar, and 15-year-old Olivia growing up with her eccentric mom.
The plot was intriguing, especially the part about 15-year-old Olivia just learning to rebel against the way she has been raised. The author did a good job of presenting bipolar depression as it manifested across the generations of Olivia's family. This was a great debut novel; I look forward to more of her novels.
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