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Two Sisters Finally Get Adulting
Jen Nilsson has it all, a great condo in California, a fast-track job in a Silicon Valley start-up, and a seemingly limitless future. Life is good and bound to get better. Then her sister Katie, ten years younger, and just out of college, calls and asks if she can move in with her big sister. Katie can no longer stand living with their parents.
“If You Can Get It,” a novel by Brendan Hodge opens with this. Jen wants to say no, but Katie is not calling from their parents’ home near Chicago. She is right outside Jen’s California condo. Jobless Katie lacks the money to drive home. Jen is stuck. She has to say yes.
The two sisters prove separated by more than just a ten year age difference. Jen is a quintessential Gen-Xer, focused, and deliberate. She has an MBA and a fast-track career. Katie is an archetypical Millennial, impulsive, and spontaneous. Her degree is in comparative religion, preparing her for a job at Starbucks. Jen is an extrovert. Katie is an introvert.
Her sister’s arrival proves the first of several abrupt changes to Jen’s ordered life. Her start-up gets acquired. The new owner kills the product line Jen ramrodded into production. Jen is suddenly out of a job. She snaps up the first job offer she gets, despite feeling uncomfortable with it. Her father and a good friend advised against taking it, and Jen can survive comfortably until a better job appears, but Jen panics at being without a job.
The rest of the novel follows the adventures of the two young women. Jen and Katie both suffer the results of their impulsiveness. Jen’s uncharacteristically hasty acceptance of a job she was uncomfortable taking leads to a set of comic misadventures in China with her new company. Katie, through her typical impetuousness, entangled her in a legal mix-up of which Jen is unaware.
As the novel progresses, the sisters turn out to need each other. Each sister provides something the other lacks. Katie helps Jen become less self-centered and self-absorbed. Jen guides Katie into responsibility and maturity. Ironically, the seemingly together Jen has further to go than chaotic Katie.
“If You Can Get It” is a delightful novel. The sisters’ misadventures are occasionally fraught, always amusing, and never tragic. Hodge offers insight into the meaning of family and what becoming an adult is really about.
“If You Can Get It,” by Brendan Hodge, Ignatius Press, 2020, 285 pages, $16.95 (trade paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)
This review was written by Mark Lardas who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in Literature
Are there Jesuits?
Not really. There is one character who decided the Jesuits were not for him.
Too bad. Take it from this lifelong Silicon Valleyite: the Jebbies at Santa Clara U. have the best stocked bar in the Valley.
Jebbies in the Valley just got to drink free.
Thanks for the review, @seawriter. Approximately what year does the story take place? I’m trying to make the age arithmetic work out–maybe 2005 or so? How did you hear about this book and come to review it? It seems a bit of a departure from your usual review lineup.
I’d say it is contemporary – probably the 2014-2019 because there is no Covid. I do know my middle son (born 1986) is really a Gen-Xer in most ways and refuses to be associated with Millenials while my youngest nephew (born 1995) is a stereotypical Millenial, I can kind of see them as male versions of Jen and Katie. (That snapped into focus as I was searching for an example.)
It isn’t that much of a departure if you look over the last ten years of my reviews. I try to review at least one non-SF fiction book each month. Often they are mysteries, but Ignatius and various local Texas publishing houses (basically those in the Texas A&M Press Consortium) make up most of those. (I consider most fiction that comes out of New York City publishers to be hot messes.)
It is this year largely because Covid has disrupted the book industry. (Don’t ask about my latest royalty statement. It was a disaster.) This year a lot of my review book requests are going unanswered and I have had difficulty getting review books due to Covid. (I convinced the publisher to send me an electronic copy.)