We Are the Brennans and How Vivienne Deserved Better
Title: We Are the Brennans
Author: Tracey Lange
Year Released: 2021
Narrator: Barrie Kreinik
Rating ⅗ Stars
Note: SPOILERS INCLUDED!! Quotes included are from the book being reviewed.
Very recently I read We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange. It’s one of those moving-back-home-so-I-can-sort-out-my-life stories featuring a tight-knit Irish family of 6 (7 if you include the deceased mother) and the struggle to save their family owned pubs while past secrets threaten to sever already strained bonds.
While I enjoyed the family dynamics, characterizations, and plot, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed with the handling of one character in particular : Vivienne.
Vivienne is Kale’s wife and mother of his son, but Kale’s heart belongs to a past flame. Like any wife who finds out her husband will suddenly be seeing a lot of the ex fiancé she was the rebound for, Vivienne acts jealous and insecure-behaviors that are validated when Kale walks out on his family for said ex after only a couple months of her being back in town. (You can imagine how gaslit Vivienne was feeling for a while there.)
Kale and Sunday (his ex fiancé and the main character of the book) share a passionate kiss before Kale and Vivienne are officially separated. The author took a big risk in doing this as readers are intensely against infidelity carried out by either the main character or the love interest, and readers certainly don’t see abandoning a wife and child as suitable, appropriate traits for a love interest.
I believe the author was guided to lessen this misdeed by lowkey villainizing Vivienne. She deserves this outcome because she got pregnant by purposefully becoming lax in her birth control regime. Ironically Sunday also gets pregnant due to spotty birth control use, but it was by accident, but I guess blatant irresponsibility can be overlooked for the main character. The author tries to paint Vivienne as being materialistic. Vivienne grew up poor and ashamed. When she tries to better herself she is victimized and exploited, and in the wake of her insecurities she tries to build a nice family for herself and provide her son with things she never had growing up-a nice house for instance.
Sure, Vivienne is a horrible person, if by horrible you mean super relatable. It’s clear that Vivienne and Kale aren’t compatible. It’s so clear in fact that there’s no way Kale didn’t know that before dating and entering into a physical relationship with her. And what’s worse? Trying to build a nice life with someone OR using someone as a placeholder for your ex?
“Do you see they’re all just a bunch of liars who hurt the people around them?”
When Vivienne points out the Brennan’s dysfunction, she isn’t wrong, and it’s the fact that she isn’t caught up in the pretense of their idyllic life that ultimately costs her acceptance into the fold (something that’s illustrated symbolically in her never being comfortable around Shane (aka the symbolic embodiment of their collective dysfunction)).
“You and that family deserve each other.”
These are Vivienne’s last words to Kale, and I can’t help but feel she is right. I can only hope that somewhere in the fictional bookverse Vivienne ends up with Michael, a rejected side character in the book but a worthy love interest.
-Anneliesa
