The Most Fun We Ever Had

Think of a professional archivist, the kind who spends their life in the climate-controlled quiet of a university basement, surrounded by acid-free boxes. Their job is to preserve the official, documented history of a family: the birth certificates, the property deeds, the carefully dated photographs from weddings and graduations. They build a clean, linear narrative from these artifacts—a story of milestones and public declarations. But then, years later, a different kind of archive is discovered. Tucked away in a dusty attic is a jumbled box of unsent letters, forgotten diaries filled with crossed-out sentences, and receipts for solitary train tickets to unknown towns. This second collection tells a completely different story. It’s messy, contradictory, and deeply human, filled with the secret longings, private resentments, and quiet sacrifices that the official record could never capture. The real story of the family is found in the volatile space between the two boxes—the gap between the life that was presented and the one that was actually lived.

This profound tension between a family’s public mythology and its private, unarticulated truths is precisely what Claire Lombardo set out to explore. While working at a public relations firm, she found herself fascinated by the stories people construct for themselves and for the world. She began to wonder about the hidden lives simmering beneath the surface of even the most seemingly perfect families. Lombardo spent nearly a decade crafting her debut novel, meticulously weaving together the past and present of a single family to excavate the complex, often contradictory, emotions that bind them. The result is an intimate epic that feels less like a constructed story and more like a privileged glimpse into the secret, messy archives of love, rivalry, and enduring connection.

Module 1: The Gravity of a Perfect Marriage

The emotional core of this novel is the 40-year marriage of Marilyn and David Sorenson. It’s a living, breathing force that shapes everything around it. Their love story, which began with an awkward encounter in a university building, becomes a kind of family mythology. It’s a "shining unfathomable orb" that their four daughters orbit, whether they like it or not.

But here’s the thing. The book argues that a legendary parental love story can become a psychological burden for the next generation. Their daughters—Wendy, Violet, Liza, and Grace—grew up witnessing a bond so complete, so all-consuming, that it sets an impossible standard. Liza, pregnant and facing the collapse of her own partnership, tells her doctor that her parents’ "stable, perfect, desperately infatuated" marriage makes her feel like she is "falling so short of the mark." This is about feeling like you can never replicate the foundational security you grew up with, creating a lifelong sense of inadequacy.

This leads to the next point. The narrative reveals that enduring intimacy is built on a private language that outsiders can't decode. Marilyn and David communicate through a lifetime of shared jokes, physical shorthand, and unspoken understandings. They can make a life-altering decision with a simple phrase like "me neither." They can resolve a fight with a quiet kiss. This private world is their sanctuary. It’s what allows them to weather the chaos of raising four daughters and the crises that follow. But for their children, this perfect union is something they can only observe from the outside. They are witnesses to the love, but not participants in its secret language. This creates a subtle but powerful sense of separation.

Building on that idea, the book shows how even the strongest partnerships experience seasons of profound disconnection. This isn't a fairy tale. Over the decades, Marilyn and David face periods of intense loneliness, frustration, and miscommunication. After a family crisis, they spend nearly a year as "soldiers from battle," sleeping side-by-side without touching, their conversations reduced to "businesslike exchanges." The strength of their marriage lies in their capacity for reconnection. A single touch, a shared memory, or a moment of crisis can instantly bridge the gap, reminding them of the foundational bond that remains, even when buried under layers of stress and resentment.

Finally, the book makes a powerful statement about how a lifelong partnership redefines the concept of home. When their last daughter leaves for college, Marilyn and David return to an empty house. The quiet feels alien. But in that moment, they turn to each other. Marilyn realizes, "The nest would never be empty so long as she was in it with him." Their partnership is the true center of gravity. The enduring, evolving, and resilient connection between two people who have chosen each other, again and again, for a lifetime defines "home."