This Is How We Love - by Lisa Moore

Book Synopsis

From the celebrated author of February and Caught comes an exhilarating new novel that asks: What makes a family? How does it shape us? And can we ever really choose who we love?

As the snowstorm of the century rages, twenty-one-year-old Xavier is beaten and stabbed in a vicious attack. His mother, Jules, must fight her way through the shuttered streets of St. John's to reach the hospital where Xavier lies unconscious. When a video of the attack surfaces, Jules struggles to make sense of what she sees in the footage -- and of what she can't quite make out.

While Xavier's story unfolds, so, too, do the stories that brought him there. Here, across families and generations, are stories of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers; of children cared for, neglected, lost, and re-found; of selfless generosity and reluctant debt. Above all, Moore, in the inimitable largesse of her art, paints a shimmering portrait of the sacrifice, pain, and wild joy of loving.

A tour de force of storytelling and craft, This Is How We Love brings us a cast of characters so rich and true they could only have been written by Lisa Moore.

Review Quotes

A haunting novel about the complexity of relationships, which can be both mazes of hopelessness and sources of wild joy.

A masterful book that goes boldly into our most tightly held anxieties, fears, and longings about who and how we love, This is How We Love is an unmissable read.

As ever, there's real verve and volume to Moore's writing, with all characters viewed from different angles, as they observe and lure and refract against each other at different times and in different approaches knit together to show 'This is How We Love.'

Moore is at her strongest when she writes about ineffable bonds in all their forms, bringing to mind works by Anne Enright and Deborah Levy, both of whom have used family as a device to interrogate women's hidden lives and desires. Nuanced and heartfelt, This Is How We Love ranks among Moore's best.

The sentences astonish in thrashing staccato form, unearthing one insight and backstory after the next, memories recounted from different perspectives, the snowstorm all the while never letting up ... Such is the power of Moore's writing.

Using her careful prose like a trowel ... Moore analyzes the fundamental connection between the ways we love and the stories we hold, tell, and repeat.

You will want to read This is How We Love in one sitting. Why? Because it won't leave you alone. The characters live with you and in you and will remain long after you have read the last page.