The End of Always by Randi Davenport | Review

There are many themes in The End of Always and the most highlighted is domestic abuse. It also contains issues of sexual abuse, the role of women in the workplace, domesticity, coming-of-age, the immigrant experience in America, and the relationship of sisters. If you're looking for a happy love story, you won't find it in The End of Always. Instead, you'll find a story of endurance.

I admit, I judge a book by its cover and the the beautiful cover of The End of Always drew me to pick it up and run my hands over it. The cover depicts a white-shingled house on a grassy landscape. Beyond the house is a lake and a bare tree with a herd of birds flying past. What's most striking is the beautiful fall season, tinging all the elements with hues of orange and yellow.

Like the cover, the narrative of The End of Always is beautiful yet simple. It has an almost stream of consciousness point-of-view, tied together with simple dialogues and folklore. It is about Marie, a seventeen year old girl, who yearns to escape the domestic abuse that had ensnared the women in her family for generations. She lives with her abusive father, mother, and two sisters. When her mother is mysteriously murdered by her husband's abuse, Marie starts to question her lot in life. She grows distant from her older sister, Martha, who does not share Marie's rebellious thoughts of her father and the role of women. When she meets and falls in love with a young carpenter named August, their whirlwind romance gives Marie hope that she could finally escape the fear and abuse that constantly shadowed her and her sisters. Unfortunately, their short-lived romance is is a broken mix of young love, lust, and abuse. The rest of the novel is about how Marie chooses the unconventional path toward freedom.

If you're searching for an intense narrative that delves deep into the psychological repercussions of abuse, you won't find it in The End of Always. Rather, you'll float through the narrative like the Wisconsin seasons that seemed to float by while Marie overcame her trials. Reading this book felt like I was flipping through my grandparents' old photo album. But I wasn't just looking at photos of happy times, I was also looking at photos that lay bear the raw realities of each own's life.

Some might find this type of narrative too whimsical or disjointed for a story that contains heavy themes such as domestic abuse; however I found it engaging. It fit with the surreal and disjointed state of Marie's narrative as her mind struggled to keep up with the hard realities of the immigrant family, young love, and abuse.

However, the lack of solidarity among women in the novel was frustrating. Marie, although softhearted of her younger sister Hattie, forms no close bonds with the other women of the novel. She is wary of her sister Martha, scornful of the women at the laundry mat, and distant from her neighbor Bertha. The struggle of not only Marie, but also her mother and grandmother is very isolated.

Nevertheless, The End of Always is a somber yet lovely book that took me to a time and place in American immigrant history that I've never delved into. It also brought light to the overlooked issue of domestic and gender violence in our communities.

I encourage you to pick up The End of Always at your local bookstore or purchase it through your e-reader device like I did!