After years of living on opposite coasts, Lydia moves in with her sister Joyce. After new neighbors move in upstairs, tensions rise between the middle-aged sisters.

This character-focused novel was, at times, difficult to read. Much of it is told from Joyce's perspective, and she's so very difficult! If there are two things people take from this book, I hope they are: 1) keeping family secrets can hurt and 2) GO TO THERAPY.

This is a great unconventional family story with characters who are occasionally unlikable, but always people you want to root for..

Oh SMALL WORLD, I wanted to love you, with your wintery mansion cover and being my first Laura Zigman novel. But this one just fell flat for me. The prose and POV changes quickly and confusingly, and the story just wasn't interesting. I wasn't sure what the point was, and the characters were not able to redeem that. I thought a book about two cranky, divorced sisters in their 50s coming back together as roommates and reliving their childhood trauma would be a wild ride! Unfortunately it just wasn't my cup of tea.

One of my favorite #reads so far this year - and an unexpected one at that. Bonus: it’s fairly short, so not too time consuming!

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The story revolves around the common thread of Joyce, one year divorced and completely (albeit maybe unknowingly) lonely, who finds comfort in her neighborhood social networking site “Social Media” where people share solutions to everyday problems, vent when needed, complain when (usually) unproductive and unnecessary, share holiday updates, etc - you know the pages, there is a Facebook group for everything these days.

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Something about the posts and this woman’s unknowingly finding comfort from the community really just broke something in me, and was just so sad and comforting at the same time. I wanted to hold her.

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The story also centers around Joyce’s sister, also recently divorced, moving in with her during this time period. Hence, two very different middle aged women with no close friendship or typical sister relationship are forced to navigate new territory. *** SPOILER ALERT: Lydia’s behavior absolutely drove me insane and was intolerable 99.9% of the time - I could not handle it at times, though my heart did break for her at times***

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The story also recounts the girls turbulent and eventually traumatic childhood, in which their upbringing and existence was defined by their sister Eleanor’s severe diagnoses (cerebral palsy and a severe seizure disorder), their interpretation of their mother’s greater love for and devotion to Eleanor, and Eleanor’s eventual childhood death.

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The mother-daughter relationships, pain, love, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy, and the well intentioned, maybe even necessary, but brutal dynamic of their mother and sister, Eleanor, and the shattering grief she experienced after the loss of Eleanor, is one of the most unflinchingly powerful elements of a narrative I have come upon in a while.

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This one just has a simple, beautiful magic to it. The Small World posts really just did me in.

A nice read - nothing that’s earth-shattering or life-altering, but that’s ok sometimes, right? I enjoy most of this author’s work and this one was no exception. Give this a gander, you’ll be glad that you did.

A book about two estranged sisters who as move in together when life circumstances change. Late in their 40's they slowly learn more about one another and who they are today along with reconciling some of their past family life.

A fun family drama involving sisterhood, secrets, family secrets, grief and forgiveness.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the complimentary e-copy of this book.

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Divorced sisters Joyce and Lydia move in together and through revelations about their childhood and family past learn to come to terms with their relationship with each other, their parents and their sister Eleanor who was disabled and died at a young age. Joyce finds herself going on her neighborhood social networking site, Small World for help in solving issues in her life. With the use of poetry the author illustrates Joyce’s thoughts through the chapters and for me this was not a writing style that many of the books I read contain. I would have liked more development of the characters as I do enjoy books about the relationships between women.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers for providing me with this advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review..

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book. I loved the style and storytelling of this book. I found the whole thing a little melancholy and a bit bleak. I enjoyed the fluctuation between present and childhood. And I especially enjoyed that there was no love story subplot- just a good story about family. Well done!

I really really really wanted to like this one. A story of sisters? Yes, please! One of whom has passed away from a disability? You have my attention! But sadly, this one just did not work for me. I was hoping it would have me thinking about my own sibling relationships, the impact of my disability on my loved ones, and getting me to feel all the feels. But all I felt was bored and depressed. The subject matter is heavy, so I expected to be sad, but this was just bleak and hopeless. Not for me.

This was not a favorite book. There is a tremendous amount of repetition in the the action and the characters.
The characters were hard to like. I wanted to like the story and the idea was intriguing, but not enough to hold my interest. Thank you @NetGalley@EccoPress@SmallWorld

In the present day, newly divorced Joyce accepts her sisters request to move in after her own divorce, although they have never been very close. What follows is their journey as sisters to reconcile with their past hurts hanging on from their mother's focus on their now deceased sister who needed extra care.
Well written, "Small World" is skillful at focusing on the small moments, letting the reader draw information by things left unsaid. Infused with small poems Joyce makes out of posts on a neighborhood app, "Small World" swings between poetic, funny, and thoughtful. It offers complex characters and universal hurts to draw in a reader that is looking for more depth to their novels.

Recently divorced sisters move in together and reckon with their childhood, the loss of their third sister, their mother’s perceived lack of interest, and their loud upstairs neighbors. This book looks seriously at childhood experiences- not just how they affect us as adults, but the soft and complete devastation of shame, a temper tantrum, or being forgotten. The relationship between all three sisters is the heart of the book, and feels authentic.

The book also tried to play with form- one of the sisters secretly turns posts from a Nextdoor-type app into poems. I did not find that this added anything to the book.

I appreciate that this book handles the complicated subject of disability, and how the care for and loss of a child with a disability can affect a family. I wish more was done to center Eleanor in this discussion. It’s not lost on me that many of the characters dealt with their own disabilities or differences. Some of these disabilities were temporary and some had a smaller impact, but each was made to feel like the world around them wasn’t built for their body. That was clever, and the part of this book I liked the most.

Thank you to Net Galley and Ecco for the digital ARC!

Zigman’s ziggurat look at family, the ones we are born into and he ones we make, is as sharp as it is warm and perceptive. A treat to read and one that will stay with the reader long after the pages are finished.

Two sisters, Joyce and Lydia, are back together in one house after years of been on opposite sides of the country. Together they need to learn to navigate in each other's space and deal with the undiscussed legacy of their mother's obsession with their dead sister. Plenty of family drama added to the outside world intruding into their relationship of lack there of. An interesting look at a singular slice of life.

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title.

This Story is set over the following year, alternates between present day and the past when the girls were children. Both sisters have unresolved “issues” baggage , feelings etc about their childhood that revolve around their sister Elinor who was significantly disabled and died when she was 10 and whom they’ve hardly talked about over the years. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course correct their connection for the future

I Loved the addition of annoying upstairs neighbors – the author set up a very original way that they drove Joyce to her breaking point yet also made them integral to the story as they contributed to the rising conflict between the sisters
I Loved the snippets of posts from the Small World neighborhood forum, those were little treats sprinkled throughout the story

What an incredible story from a great author. Zigman is a star. I love a look back at one's childhood as adults, when you add that siblings are doing it together it is such an incredible story. What a great book, one of the best of the year.

Small World by Laura Zigman follows two sisters, Joyce and Lydia, as they move in with each other after they both got divorced. Whole Joyce thinks that Lydia’s stay in her Cambridge apartment will be temporary, Lydia has other plans (especially when two new people move into the apartment upstairs). We end up going along for the ride while the sisters connect in the present after spending time living on different coasts, reckoning with the past, and finding a way to move into the future together. Small World is a wonderful example of a book that explains how the relationship between sisters changes over time. While my sister and I are younger than the two in the book, I full heartedly connected with the nature of a sister relationship across time — whether you live close or far to your sister. This story also tackles how two people with difficult childhoods growing up in the same household end up coping with life in adulthood. Overall, I wouldn’t call this a family drama. It is more of an insight into how a family crumbles and rebuilds itself over time. I highly recommend for those of you who want a more nuanced take on the story of a family history. Happy Reading! [provided by NetGalley]

I think I wanted to like this more than I was actually capable of liking it. A second round purchase for most libraries

Anyone who has a sister can probably relate to a lot of the complexities within in a sister/sister relationship that are discussed in this book. I did really enjoy the flashbacks throughout, when they were still a semi-unbroken family. I also really liked how the book ended, despite the hardships that led up to it.

Joyce and Lydia were the products of parents who did not take them or their feelings into account at all due to another sibling having a disability. They were severely neglected, by their mother especially, and because of this were never given the chance to be open with their struggles and figure out who they were as individuals. It was nice to see them bond and really reflect on how their childhood has affected who they are today. However, throughout most of the book I felt pretty much baseline enjoyment for what was going on, and was kind of just wondering what the bigger message of the book was going to be. I was basically just waiting for an actual plot to start, but the long story short is that there is no actual plot outside of this whole family dynamic.

I've loved Zigman's previous books, but this one just didn't do it for me. It moves at too slow of a pace, which makes it hard for me to stay invested in the story as I go along.