Margaret Meade: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The narrator’s grandmother Josie lived her life according to this mantra as a Communist and teacher, later establishing a tutoring organisation for schoolchildren. She never sought revolution. Her aim was simply to create the decent world of the title. Now she has died, her granddaughter Summer is left questioning everything. Should she meet up with Jodie’s estranged rich brother? Does she want to return to her complicated unconventional household with its shifting relationships? Will the older members of the family take away the home where she has cared for her grandmother for the past year? Above all, is it still possible to create a decent world? Lots of interesting characters to get your head around, but an intriguing family saga.

Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy from NetGalley. This review reflects my honest personal opinion of the book.

Enjoyed reading, however, I sort of felt like it didn't go anywhere, it was interesting but not completely engaging

I loved Ellen Hawley's 'Other People Manage' so was excited to read 'A Decent World' which offers a similarly compassionate and well-observed exploration of troubled families and relationships.

Summer Dawidowitz was brought up by her loving grandmother, Josie, a blacklisted Communist teacher and activist. The novel begins with Josie's death after Summer has spent the last year caring for her. We follow Summer as she tries to forge her own path, honour her grandmother's legacy and re-evaluate various relationships, including with her mother Zanne who abandoned Summer in order to pursue her singing career, with Josie's wealthy estranged brother David Freund, and with the polyamorous revolutionary 'Household' to which Summer belongs.

The wisdom and insight with which Hawley writes about relationships and interactions frequently reminded me of Anne Tyler or Elizabeth Strout, though sometimes, particularly in this novel, there is more of an acerbic edge to her observations, for instance when describing Summer's only male housemate, Zac: "The dealings between the women took place in the background, in a language he couldn't quite catch - one he didn't stop talking long enough to learn." Hawley also captures the simultaneously fragile and unbreakable bonds that can exist between members of a family, particularly when the nucleus of that family has gone. "We would have liked to like each other better," Summer remarks at one point.

What I loved most about this novel, though, was its nuanced depiction of idealism and disillusionment. Josie and her husband Sol, Summer and 'The Household' all fervently hope for a fairer world, yet must contend on a daily basis with doubt and disappointment. As Josie 's son Jack comments, "It's feeling like the whole world disagrees with you. It's scary as hell. And you lose. Over and over again, you lose. Things do change, but never enough and it always feels like you're losing. The power's on the other side." And when Summer and her housemates take Josie to visit an Occupy camp and tell her, "This is the revolution", her response is "It's going to take more than this." The ways different characters find to live with these constant feelings of disappointment drive much of the novel, and Hawley's poignant conclusion, which takes us back to Josie's perspective, reminded me of another great frustrated idealist, Dorothea Brooke from 'Middlemarch'

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this perceptive and quietly moving novel to review.

This has been hard, quite hard actually. I struggled to get into the story and, when I finally did, I realized I was already midways and there was still no recognizable plot to it (besides the protagonist´s grief and her relationships, for which I didn´t have many answers yet).
I think it got better when I got to read the flashbacks and I got to know more about her family (her grandmother particularly). It was overall good, but it didn´t got me hooked to the page.

This book is a bit of a puzzle to this reviewer - it combines noble aims with deeply personal stories but does descend into navel gazing at times. Summer is a young activist, working to save the planet, when her beloved grandmother dies. This event causes Summer to reassess everything she has accepted without question up to that point in her life, and the book explores her doubts, her relationships and her visions for the future. For this reviewer, the writing style is over detailed and analytical, making the book a bit of a slog unfortunately - I tried hard to stay the course, but didn’t quite get to the end.