Book Review: The Reunion by Joanne Fedler

A hilarious and often thought-provoking novel about what it means to be a good parent, a good friend and a good person. What happens when a group of forty-something women head away for a weekend together, leaving behind husbands, teenage kids and their mothering chores? It's been a long time since Jo, Helen, Ereka and CJ became friends through a mothers' group, and some new faces have also been invited to their reunion. Over two days of eating and drinking, intimacies are shared, marriage and motherhood discussed, and friendships - both old and new - are tested. From the international bestselling author of SECRET MOTHERS' BUSINESS, this insightful novel examines how mothers face new challenges in their lives and change as their children grow up. It celebrates the fierce love between mothers and offspring, exploring what it means to be a good parent, a good friend and a good person - and how all love is ultimately about learning to let go.

I read this book several months ago when it was first released. Since then I have referred to it several times in conversations with friends and even in a post I wrote for Happy Child about stay-at-home mothers and depression.

Even though the characters weren’t particularly similar to my own friends or myself, there were so many moments in this book where I felt like they were articulating my own frustrations, challenges or subconscious motivations.

As a group, the women who meet together for their weekend retreat in The Reunion represent so many aspects of life familiar to women in their 30s and onwards. Between then they have had serious relationships, relationship breakdowns, had children or have passed the point where children are a possibility. They are dealing with illness within their family, either with children or aging parents, and they are facing a changes in their role as a mother, wife, partner and/or friend as their children grow older and they move on from the constant demands of parenting babies and toddlers.

I really appreciated that despite their age and experience, the characters were still discovering things about themselves. They still faced uncertainty and needed to be reminded to look beyond their superficial assumptions – they needed to be taken out of their own small world and take the opportunity to focus on the bigger picture. It was reassuring to read about characters who, like me, didn’t have it all worked out yet.

The following is one of my favourite quotes from the book. I used it in the Happy Child article and it mentioned again only recently in a conversation I was having about friendship. It has come to mind often since I read the book in May as I have been trying to make sense of my own changing social connections:

‘You know, I thought we’d be friends for life, that group from our last getaway. But those friendships were, like childhood, just for a season. As our kids developed their own quirks and talents and we all carefully weighed up who might flourish in an all-boys or all-girls school, who might do best with a religious- or arts-and-drama-based education, it’s as if we’ve scattered like shooed seagulls in the directions our children’s personalities have taken us. I had no idea just how fickle I could become, and how easy it would be for me to befriend the parents of my child’s latest best friend. I wonder, sometimes, what happened to the integrity of my own preferences.’

The Reunion is a continuation of the story of several characters from Fedler’s previous novel Secret Mother’s Business, which I haven’t read but am now keen to have a look at. Fedler has also recently co-authored It Doesn’t Have to be so Hard: The Secrets to Finding and Keeping Intimacy with Graeme Friedman.

I can highly recommend The Reunion as an enjoyable and thoughtful women’s fiction novel filled with characters living lives that reflect a little of the experiences of many modern women in their 30s and 40s.

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