The Shape of Family audiobook

I lost track how many times I started crying while reading this book. There were just certain things that really resonated with me. I think books sometimes find their way into your life at the right moment and I think that is the case here. Had I read this book six months ago or a year from now maybe I wouldn't have felt such an emotional impact.I normally write a synopsis in my reviews but in my opinion the publisher's synopsis is perfect as it gives you an idea of what the book is about but it doesn't reveal too much. I honestly think the best way to read this book is without knowing any major plot points ahead of time. Kudos to the person who wrote the synopsis as it allowed me to have a much more meaningful reading experience.The book follows all four family members but I think it's fair to say Karina is the lead character as she is featured the most in the story. It's amazing how there's hardly anything I have in common with her but yet she had certain feelings I could easily relate to. And that right there is the reason why this was a special read for me. There were a few passages in the book that were powerful in that the author was able to convey a thought or feeling I've struggled to articulate in the past. This was a five star read for me but I wouldn't say it was a perfect read. Karina's storyline in the second half was hard to get thru however, I do believe it was necessary for her journey. It's okay to read something you don't particular enjoy at the time if it leads to a deeper appreciation in the end. There is something regarding Karina that was subtle but wasn't addressed until much later in the story and I admire the author for showing some restraint. Not everything has to be spelled out for a reader especially when the character herself might not have fully wrapped her head around it. (Trying to choose my words wisely so I don't give anything away.)I do recommend this book especially if you enjoy family dramas. I received a free advance copy of this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program and the publisher. I was not obligated to post a review here and all views expressed are my honest opinion.

“It seems wrong for beauty to still exist in the world, doesn’t it?” When the curtain rises on THE SHAPE OF FAMILY, Keith Olander, a successful and wealthy investment banker, and his Indian wife, Prem, the daughter of an Indian diplomat, a dancer, and a foreign policy analyst, are living the life of a happily married couple. One might be forgiven for characterizing them as typical young California professionals living a typical privileged suburbanite life. They have two children, also typical in all of the obvious ways. Karina is a steady, serious, intelligent, well-motivated young teenage girl with a typical dose of angst and unresolved rebellion. Her younger brother Prem, simply put, is an effervescent, unstoppable, bouncy bundle of joy. Like any pair of siblings, Karina and Prem have their moments and their tiffs but it is clear that they are happy kids and love one another dearly.If THE SHAPE OF FAMILY were a stage play, the curtain would fall on the introduction of the family in Act I on a tragic cliff-hanger, young Prem’s accidental death by drowning in the family pool with Karina nominally in charge before their parents had returned home from work. Acts II and III portray the subsequent break-up and demise of the family, following the individual self-destructive decisions of Keith, Jaya and Karina as they fail to come to grips with their grief over Prem’s untimely death. Karina moves on to center stage as she sacrifices her dreams and goals, drops out of school, effectively cuts off contact with her family and former friends, and moves into a commune ultimately revealed as a cult led by a self-serving evil fraud who will remind readers of the likes of Jim Jones or Charles Manson.But I think more analytical readers will take home a deeper message (view spoiler)[from the posthumous musings of the spirit of young Prem, that cults capable of destroying lives come in different shapes and forms. In the case of THE SHAPE OF FAMILY, Ms Gowda opined that those cults might include slavery to job, work, money, ego and power, or even simply organized religion, its demanding and overwhelming beliefs and dogma, and its insistence on faith and the rejection of critical thought and rational analysis.“There are so many ways to die without actually leaving the world: You can cut off a piece of yourself, or your feelings. You can stop doing the things you love, or lose sight of your dreams and goals. You can separate yourself from those who love you, or you can never be willing to find love at all. You can withdraw from the world, … These may look like ways of living, but they’re not. They’re ways of dying.” (hide spoiler)]THE SHAPE OF FAMILY is a powerful novel (certainly based on Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s previous works SECRET DAUGHTER and THE GOLDEN SON, I had expected nothing less) when read purely as a gripping family drama. But it also provides evocative, eyebrow lifting food for thought that will bounce around in your consciousness for a good long while after you turn that final page.Definitely recommended.Paul Weiss

I own all three of this author’s books. I’ve wanted to read them ever since I read rave reviews of Secret Daughter and because the author and I share a beloved alma mater. I’m so grateful I finally read a book of hers and that it was The Shape of Family.I think the best compliment we can give to a book is that we connected with it. Who knows what the thread or threads may be; sometimes I think it’s a familiar experience or circumstance. Mostly it’s brought on by feelings as if we can insert ourselves into this story. That’s how I felt about The Shape of Family. It’s so profound and relatable that I could also be living this story.The Shape of Family is the story of the Olanders. Jaya and Keith represent the American dream with their beloved children, Karina and Prem, living in sunny California.A tragedy strikes this family, one that sends them spinning for years to come. It causes the family to drift apart, but the story is about how their family attempts to come back together. It’s about defining family in different ways. It’s also about finding ourselves.If you enjoy character-driven, emotional stories of family, The Shape of Family gets my highest recommendation. Its story and characters will live in my heart for a long time.I received a gifted copy. All opinions are my own.Many of reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

Lots of tears were shed as I read about the Olander’s. After trauma strikes, this family falls apart as each person deals with pain, sadness and loneliness in their own ways. The Shape of Family is an emotional story of a family in crisis. Despite the sadness, I loved it.The Olanders lived the American dream. Jaya, a diplomat’s daughter from India, and Keith, a bank executive from Pennsylvania met in London in the late 1980s and years later made a beautiful home together in California with their teenage daughter, Karina and young son, Prem. After an unspeakable tragedy that changes their lives forever, this broken family is fractured and each one experiences their own difficult journey to come to terms with what happened, to find themselves again and to reconnect as a family.Feeling very alone, Jaya, finding comfort in her culture, and puts her heart and soul into the spirituality she learned from her mother back in India. Keith puts his energy into his career but not with the most favorable results. Karina engages in self harm, joins a cult and makes questionable choices as she embarks on her own, and Prem watches from above as his beloved family is shattered without him.I loved how author Shilpi Somaya Gowda got into the heads of each of her characters as they travelled their own individual paths, and I especially enjoyed Prem’s insightful observations. Lots of tears were shed as I read about the Olanders. Watching this family fall apart after trauma and seeing how each person dealt with pain, sadness and loneliness in their own ways was very emotional. The road to healing can be lonely and dangerous, but it can also bring people who care for each other back together and offer hope for the future. I was captivated by The Shape of Family and highly recommend this powerful and beautiful story.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.When tragedy befalls a family, blame and grief widen the cracks and isolate the remaining members. A mother who misses her culture, a father who is a workaholic, and a daughter who is searching for an outlet for the pain. The Shape of Family is an intimate portrayal of how lost someone can get when a loved one is taken away and how families can grieve together and separately, trying to find their way back to one another. Everyone in her family had their secrets, and Karina became practiced at keeping them. Utilizing first person povs, The Shape of Family, jumps povs and time periods (mostly linearly) between Jaya (mother), Keith (father), Karina (daughter/sister), and Prem (son/brother). The story starts introducing the family through Karina's eyes and we learn that she sees it as Prem and her against the world. With an Indian mother and American father, kids at school constantly remark on her skin tone. Her mother is proud of her culture, while Karina sees any hallmark of it as another way to make her different. She's a bit closer to her father because of this issue and while she has a bestfriend Izzy, Karina ultimately sees Prem as the only one who can feel like her and understand.This sets-up the emotional foundation for when a couple chapters later, Prem drowns in the family pool. Karina is thirteen at the time and watching him while her parents are at work, she performs CPR but is unable to save him. The guilt she feels from this is obvious and as readers follow her throughout her life, this tragedy and guilt is apparent in every decision she makes. We get povs from her parents, Jaya's guilt sends her searching for answers, which she looks for in religion, and Keith's guilt at his inability to keep his wife from depression and daughter from pushing him away has him throwing himself more into his work. The story though, mainly follows Karina. “Mr. and Mrs. Olander,” the officer says as they reach the top landing, her hand on the door handle. “I'm not sure what's happening with your daughter. All I know is she needs your love and support right now.” Karina tries to handle her grief through cutting but when she goes off to college, she finds relief in becoming a new person, no one knowing about Prem. This pushing away and ignoring those emotions works for awhile, until her first love ends up being her first heartbreak and she once again is lost as to how to deal with her pain. Her vulnerability is taken advantage of and Karina finds, what she thinks of as love and family, in a commune with increasingly cult like actions.This was a poignant dip into how grief can affect a family individually and as a whole. While we get pov looks into how Jaya and Keith are handling their son's death, I thought there could have been more between the two; they divorce and I thought we missed reading/feeling some of that emotional upheaval. Readers also get Prem's pov after he dies and I'm not sure this worked for me. Except for a crossroads moment towards the end, his pov didn't add anything for me and I think having him completely absent would have made the characters stark cut-off even more felt to the reader. They are flawed, all three of them, but they belong to each other. Whims of fate, Keith ended up surviving 9/11 because of a delayed meeting but their son drowns in the family pool, and the fact that there is no set time on how long grief can keep a hold of you, were achingly apparent in this story. The way the characters tried to fill their lives with things that turned out to be empty for them and beginning to see that acknowledging, addressing, and processing their emotions through therapy was helpful to them, was deep and thoughtful. The Shape of Family will have you shedding a tear or two as the Olander family rides the waves of grief.

In her latest book, Shilpi Somaya Gowda beautifully and sensitively details how a tragedy and its aftermath tears a family apart as each member struggles to deal with the devastating loss that has crippled their family.With her wonderfully descriptive prose, Gowda brings readers into the Olander family with much of the book detailing how each family member handles their grief in vastly different ways. This is a quieter, slowly paced read that may not have twists and turns but will give readers much to think about making it an excellent book club selection. This is a poignant and honest look at how grief affects people differently. I believe readers who have experienced such a loss will especially connect with the Olander family's journey from paralyzing grief, to their subsequent disconnection from each other and onward into healing as this family begins to understand what it means to be a family again.

I really enjoyed this hearbreaking family drama read about a family who suffered through a painful tragedy. The writing was beautiful, sensitive and realistic that I related to the characters immediately. This was my first book with Gowda and she became a favorite very quickly. This was an amazing character driven story in which the readers will experience how each of the family members dealt with this terrible tragedy in each of their own way. Warning - the first 10 percent of the book had me in tears so make sure to have some tissues handy. The Olander family consisted of Jaya, the mother and wife from India who immigrates to London and meets her future husband, Keith an American from Philadephia. Karina is their teenage daughter and the younger son is Prem. The story was centered on their daughter Katrina 11 yo who is quite headstrong and obviously hurting and follows through as she is leaving for college. Her path to separate away from her family from the hurt that has not healed, will be the poignant part of the story as she is reeled back to the family that love her the most. I truly enjoyed reading about this family and I felt that through her writing, Gowda really had a deep understanding on the human experience of anger, grief and loss.

A moving, poignant portrait of what grief can do to a family. This is a very realistic story, even though there are chapters written by a ghost (those are some of the most heart rending chapters). Each member of the family take turns telling their story and some of the chapters I liked much more than others. At one point, I did begin to lose interest in the parents' tales. Karina's story is the most touching. Recommended.

I really enjoyed this hearbreaking family drama read about a family who suffered through a painful tragedy. The writing was beautiful, sensitive and realistic that I related to the characters immediately. This was my first book with Gowda and she became a favorite very quickly. This was an amazing character driven story in which the readers will experience how each of the family members dealt with this terrible tragedy in each of their own way. Warning - the first 10 percent of the book had me in tears so make sure to have some tissues handy. The Olander family consisted of Jaya, the mother and wife from India who immigrates to London and meets her future husband, Keith an American from Philadephia. Karina is their teenage daughter and the younger son is Prem. The story was centered on their daughter Katrina 11 yo who is quite headstrong and obviously hurting and follows through as she is leaving for college. Her path to separate away from her family from the hurt that has not healed, will be the poignant part of the story as she is reeled back to the family that love her the most. I truly enjoyed reading about this family and I felt that through her writing, Gowda really had a deep understanding on the human experience of anger, grief and loss.

If the story of the Olander's does not tug at your heart strings; I don't know what to tell you. I felt every emotion that Jaya, Keith, and Karina experienced. There is grief, anger, guilt, loneliness, forgiveness, and happiness. This book is told from each family member's point of view. Alternating between each family member; draws me the reader into the story more. Therefore, I form a strong emotional connection to everyone. The actions that each family member did, I did not judge them but understood the "why". To quote Prem "I've been with my family ever since that day, and if they could really let go of all those feelings of guilt and sadness, they would feel me there." The Shape of Family is not to be missed! The Olander family will stay with you long after you have finishing reading this book.

Another beautiful book that warmed my heart. AND I finally learned why my farming friends leave their eggs on the counter. I have wanted to know this for 40 years probably!!

I struggled between 4 and 5 stars on this one. As much as I loved this book I was really annoyed by the lack of support and blatant ignorance the parents had for Karina. I know this makes the basis for the story but how can you be so oblivious to your hurting daughter....if the adult in a situation is hurting then you know the child in the same situation is hurting just as much or more.

There are just certain books that resonate and bring out a symphony of emotions. This was one. I cried so much that it took some time before my red swollen eyes recovered! How are families shaped by a devastating accident? This book explored just that by focusing on one family and their fall out from a tragedy. It delivered a powerful and thoughtful account of how each person takes their own path to manage pain and ultimately comes to terms with it. It focused more specifically on the lies we tell ourselves, and the faulty beliefs that guide our actions. It also highlighted bi-racial and coming-of-age challenges. With flavours of Celeste Ng’s book Everything I Never Told You, this story captures the essence of what it means to be a family and how we are all flawed. Absolutely loved this literary fiction.

The Shape of FamilyBy Shilpi Somaya GowdaIntroduction:This is a beautiful story of a family dealing with loss and grief all in their own individual ways We follow Karina, Jaya, Keith, and Prem. Prem is the youngest of the family and the one we lose early on that set into motion our story. Prem is used as an observer of his family. Karina is our main player in this story, and we follow her life and as it is. We get to touch base with both Jaya and Keith and how they each deal with grief. Shilpi has a strong voice and it shows through in this beautiful work. Body of story/Summary: Shilpi Gowda knows how to build a strong story around her characters. Karina is a young woman fumbling her way through life the best she can, carrying her guilt for her loss of her younger brother. The way she moves through this story is almost like a glimpse into someone's real life. It is hopeful and tragic all at once. This is a story that is about a family falling apart at the seems only trying to hold it together with little luck. The ending is bittersweet.Analysis/Evaluation: This is a Novel that was sent to me as an Advance Reader Copy from Harper Collins to read and review. When I started the book I wasn't hooked. When I got to page fortysomething I was hooked and engrossed into the story. I connected with each character individually for different reasons. I could feel the pain as it was conveyed through words, I was also able to feel hope when it was given. This is one of the most well written novels I have read. As it's not my general style of book that id pick up myself but now I'm going to find more books by Shilpi Gowda to read as I am now a fan of her writing.     Enjoyment:This book feels real when you read it as if you're looking in on a family's life. The story has its ebbs and flows of sadness and happiness all throughout the story. I can connect with the feeling of wanting to fit in and making mistakes and trying my best to keep my head on straight. This book is quite enjoyable with its beginning, middle, and end. I loved this story, I'm sure anyone who can connect emotionally with characters are going to be growing with them in their fictional life. Author's Voice:Shilpi's voice is wonderful and mature. The way the story is written feels autobiographical although it is fiction. Any voice that can make the story seem real is succeeding at telling their story successfully. Did the Author achieve their goal?:I believe Shilpi achieved her goal and took it home at the end of the story. Her storytelling will be enough to sell this book, the story is A1 material.Recommendations: I am going to have to recommend this story to anyone who loves a great family story, or a story about finding your way through life. There is nothing about this book that is mundane the story always moves forward and you feel how the characters are feeling. This is truly a book for anyone.   Conclusion: I am going to tell everyone to read this masterpiece of literature. Thank you to Harper Collins and Shilpi Gowda for giving me this book in advance to read, it was very enjoyable and rewarding to read. It's on shelves now. Go check it out.Please Check it out my video here: https://youtu.be/a4xJ_k90kPU

This book drew me into its folds right from the first page. I was utterly lost in the fortunes and misfortunes of the Olanders and I finished reading it in one day. I loved the sensitive and very keenly observed patterns of grief that each person goes through, and I think this portrayal is one of the best I have read. The story is cleverly structured to mirror the lives of the family. It begins with chapters that encompass the entire family, and then diverges into the individual stories of each person as they go their separate ways. The book loses a star only because it stumbles towards the end with the introduction of, what I feel, some unnecessary plot lines. I also didn't quite understand the purpose of Prem's voice in the middle. Ok, it doesn't need a purpose but somehow it was distracting, like a page hanging loose from a book. A lovely read. I can't wait to read some of Shilpi Gowda's other books.

I’ve fallen in love with Shipli’s writing with her debut novel... And I became her Serbian editor... That makes me non-objective reader :)This novel touched me personally... My dad lost his 11 months older brother when he was 13 years old, in a similar accident, and that impacted deeply his life and his mother’s... and his younger half-brother born 4 years after the accident... That shaped my family... So this book deals with serious things that scar family members, where they react in different ways in order to heal their wounds...#mustreadKome su se dopale knjige "Izgubljena kći" i "Zlatni sin" dopašće se i ovaj roman... Zasad još nema izdavača u Srbiji... nažalost...