We Are Not Ourselves

THOUGH 640 pages, We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas’s distinguished debut novel, doesn’t feel long. It’s the powerful, involving, earthy life and times of Eileen Tumulty, a Brooklyn war baby of Irish immigrants.

Eileen’s childhood is tumultuous: her much-admired father is the life and soul of the community, while her strong mother succumbs painfully to alcoholism and illness.

Eileen wants more, and think she’s found it in Ed Leary, a scientist with a cosmopolitan charm. But Ed is demanding and doesn’t share Eileen’s dreams of material success. They have a child, and then a fateful diagnosis changes their lives forever.

The strength of the book is its ordinariness. You live the characters’ small triumphs and everyday heartaches — you weep for them.

Thomas has created an old-fashioned book full of credibly complex, ordinary people with foibles and strengths.

The calm economy of the scene-setting and the subtlety of the plot development are the foundation for a genuinely moving reading experience.