The Facts of Life Book

According to the inside flap of the cover, with this book "Grahamn Joyce directs his immense storytelling gifts in an altogether new direction and achieves the most ambitious and psychologically captivating work of his career."

This is my first Joyce title, so I can't compare this book to his others, but this is the second time I've read Facts Of Life and I enjoyed it just as much this time around.

It is a story set in Coventry during WWII. We are immersed in the lives of the Vine family, matriarch Martha and her seven daughters. Three of the daughters are married with their own households, the twins live together on their own as well, but Beatie and Cassie live at home.

Cassie is the pulse of the story. And Frank is her baby son who is supposed to be given away, handed over to some other woman to raise as her own, the same way Cassie's first baby was. Because as the family knows, Cassie would not be a good mother, she simply is not mentally stable enough.

Cassie cannot go through the hand-off this time and returns to the house with baby Frank, triggering an emergency meeting of the Vine women. in the end, Martha declares that Frank can stay, and that all sisters will take their turns minding him. And so it is.

The story follows Frank for ten years, as he lives first in Martha's house, then out on the farm with Una and Tom, and then so on through the other sisters. Along the way Frank learns a lot more about life than anyone expects.

One of the threads in this story is the supernatural talent belonging to Martha (she gets warnings of what is to happen), Cassie (connected to the spirit world in ways few will ever understand), and even Frank for a time (the Man-Behind-The-Glass talked to him). I don't usually care for books with too much of such stuff going on, but anytime this subject came up in the story it did not feel creepy or scary, rather just a part of life that the people concerned all accepted, even if they did not always understand.

I thought this was beautifully written, and I will be looking into other titles by this author, even though at first glance some seem a bit more on the horror side than I care for. I will have to do more research, but Joyce is definitely going onto my Someday list of authors.

One last comment on this book: there are some scenes that may disturb some readers. One of the husbands is a mortician (these episodes, while graphic, are also portrayed with great delicacy) and at other points in the tale, there is quite blunt sexual language and innuendo. I didn't find it too offensive, but some people might.