This week I’m on a reading flight through “Adult Onset” by Ann-Marie MacDonald. The author has sold me a ticket to explore the joys, the pain, the confusions, the tensions of a lesbian marriage. The journey is fascinating.

Mary Rose (Mister), the main character, is a stay-at-home Mom raising two pre-schoolers, while her partner is often absent in her job as director of theatre productions. Each day has its turbulent moments…her toddler daughter is going through the “terrible twos”, her mother, Dolly, has symptoms of dementia, Mary Rose, herself a writer, has issues with anger management.
Woven into the narrative is Mary Rose’s struggle with the chronic discomfort of bone cysts, and her attempts to understand her own troubled childhood.

MacDonald pilots her novel at an accelerated pace. The reader cruises from crises to crises, carried along by humor and perceptive portrayals of domestic life.