sad girl lit meets motherhood

kit is a former grunge kid turned mom, from shooting LSD and other drugs to pumping milk, kit is struggling to raise her mischievous 4 year old daughter. having lost her little sister while pregnant, kit is raiding the waves of grief, seeing traces of her sister in almost every one she meets.

on a trip to the mountains that was supposed to be relaxing and healing, kit instead is thrown into her past, her childhood addled with drugs, the all girl band she started with her sister and the facts of her sisters death.

this was so heartbreaking, tender, funny, a bit messy and complicated but ultimately I felt a lot for kit and her attempts of breaking generational trauma, of bettering herself for her child and not repeating mistakes. also I love a book with a fireball of a kid. there were some parts that dragged on for me, in particular the parts where parsons would go on and on about how a drug trip felt for the MCs but in the end I did enjoy my time with we were the universe

One of my favorite genres of book is “women who don’t quite have their lives together,” and I would say this book definitely falls into that category. Reeling from the death of her sister Julie, Kit is our protagonist as she grapples with grief and its pervasive effect on her day-to-day life in the throes of motherhood. We spend time with Kit in the present tense—often with her daughter Gilda or her friend Pete—and also in the past, which mainly revolves around Kit’s relationship with Julie. The past is a trippy place; a lot of drugs are involved. The present is trippy, too, as Kit navigates her grief, a vacation with Pete, motherhood, and some misadventures, including a drug dealer in her local park. My favorite part of this book was the way the author painted Julie: she was an addict, yes, but more importantly she was a sister, a daughter, a singer, a genius. Like Kit, I felt sad that we didn’t get to know a world where Julie lived.

2.5⭐️. While this book tackled some really engaging themes, I felt like the writing style left a lot to be desired. The author was constantly flipping back and forth between present and past memories -- sometimes within the same paragraph-- and it left me feeling a bit whip-lashed. We are following a main character as she is experiencing motherhood as a young parent, grieving the loss of her sister, struggling with a mother who experiences hoarding and showing up for her friendships. There is a lot of conversation about drug and alcohol usage, lending to the confusion as we follow the plot. Ultimately, I felt really disconnected from this novel and found it really heavy rather than dark-comedy (as it was described).

(t/y to Net Galley & Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an advance reading copy for exchange of an honest review)

We Were the Universe is the story of grief and acceptance told from a sister struggling with moving on from the death of her sister. It’s been four years since Julie died. Kit tells the story of her present life without Julie while constantly remembering stories of them growing up. Presently Julie is a stay at home mom (to the wildest almost 4 year old I’ve ever read about) and wife. Her life is filled with breast feeding and going to the park. Every so often, something will happen that will trigger a memory of her sister. The flash backs were frequent and long. I felt empathy for Kit and her situation but I did not feel much for Julie. While her problems were quite sad, she never wanted better for herself. A very unfortunate experience for this family and I am glad Kit was able to come out of the other side!

i'd like to preamble this review by saying that this was a dnf for me, but i think that kimberly king parsons is a very skilled, compelling writer and i WILL be picking up more of her work.

my problems with this book are:

1.) i was expecting something about a lesbian character
2.) i didn't realize how much of this book would include motherhood

as far as our main character kit, we're introduced to her and she's married to a man. she's clearly attracted to women (there was one she mooned during a scene early on). i don't know why i was expecting a lesbian character, but this was a disappointment, though not really a dealbreaker for me as i love reading about queer characters of all kinds.

the maternity/motherhood stuff for me is a no-go. there's this trend in fiction that whenever a character is a mother, they want to smell their child (in this book) and like, describe their smell as milky (can't remember if in this book, but wouldn't be surprised), or lick their ear to cure ear infections (not in this book that i know of but Traumatic). i hate this. i hate the way women in books talk about their kids and being a parent.

this book gave me the extra ick of including a child who i think might be an incarnate of satan (in the way all kids are, not literally in the prose) and who was always trying to merge her sticky-ass body with her mom. i don't blame her mom for being fed up.

obviously this is a super personal thing for me and why i had to dnf, though when i left the story kit was on a roadtrip without her kid (naturally, the child's father is useless and can't functionally parent without kit at home which is just straight-up more ick for me).

this book seems to be delving into the death of kit's dead sister and perhaps kit reclaiming some sense of autonomy on a drug-filled trip into the woods with her bff without her family. i hope kit somehow gets her happiness.

and you, if you read this book and feel seen, i'm really happy for you. anyway, three stars because at the end of the day kimberly king parsons' prose was lush and compelling, but no, not the book for me.

Lubbock native Kimberly King Parsons says that her debut novel, We Were the Universe, “is about Texas, motherhood and psychedelics.”

It is also, she says, about sisterhood, grief, nostalgia and how one’s past choices inform the present. Her protagonist and narrator, Kit, is “filthy-minded and irreverent,” so while the book contains both hilariously dark humor and terrible sadness, there also are many, many pages concerning drugs — all kinds, but LSD and mescaline are Kit’s favorites, and not microdoses, either.

In fact, the story of her teenage experimentation with a powerful decoction of San Pedro cactus goes on so long that the reader may also begin feeling slightly trippy. But Kit is nostalgic about those days, and she doesn’t regret any of it. “Psychedelics prepare you for the craziest thing imaginable on this earth: a new human tunneling through an older human’s body.”

There’s also abundant sex depicted, both gay and straight, fantasy and real. Kit, who is happily married to a very sweet guy, is bisexual. Her fantasies roam freely, as do her memories. (The novel is dedicated to Parsons’ mother, to whom the writer winsomely apologized on an Instagram video: “Sorry about all the porn, Mom.”)

Kit is a stay-at-home mom who, at barely 25, can’t quite figure how she ended up living this weirdly straight life in Pivot, a fictional community in the northern suburbs of Dallas. She is obsessive about her wild, precocious little daughter, Gilda, because she and her younger sister Julie were severely under-parented by their own disengaged mother. In addition, Kit is haunted by dreams and memories of Julie, who died at 19 in a car crash after tragically sinking into addiction and wasting her brilliant musical talent, a la Amy Winehouse.

So Kit spends her days taking Gilda to the park, to gymnastics, to the supermarket. “I’m plugged into nothing, I have no deadlines, no personal ambitions, no professional goals of any kind. I’m dedicated to aimlessness and my adorable, needy family. Pinning Gilda down, brushing her tiny teeth, slicking her hair into disobedient pigtails.”

She develops instant, sex-fantasy-driven crushes on people, male and female; sometimes she becomes curious enough about a stranger to follow them on the street, even tail them home. She watches a lot of online porn. She does “endless, invisible, critical labor. Dishes. Laundry. So much mopping.”

Kit constantly thinks back to the three-girl band that she and her best friend, Yesenia, put together with Julie in their West Texas hometown of Wink. Wink — also the hometown of Roy Orbison — is a “spiteful little town” whose smallness “can’t be overstated.” Kit left Wink as soon as she humanly could. Yet she keeps returning to see her mother, Tammy, and her best friend, bandmate and surrogate sister. “Sometimes I hate where I’m from,” Kit says, “but the shape of Texas on a map — I can’t explain it — it chokes me up.”

Their band was called You Are the Universe, and the people who came to their shows really only came to see Julie. “Having access to genius — growing up with it sleeping in the twin bed next to you — it crystallizes your shortcomings,” Kit says. “There’s always been a tremendous gulf between my taste, which is excellent, and my ability, which is nonexistent.”

The extraordinary connection between sisters Kit and Julie, it seems, may be replicated between Kit and her daughter, Gilda. The book’s title is a callback to the sisters’ band, when the three girls were indeed their own universe.

But Gilda, who seems to have inherited the singing voice of the aunt she never knew, has now become the center of her mother’s world. One can imagine Kit whispering the name of her band to her sleeping child: You are the universe. That’s what our loved ones are, after all.

Kit hasn’t fully processed the grief she has from the death of her sister and it is starting to affect her life. Kit got pregnant senior year of her generally unsuccessful college career, dropped out, got married and her sister Julie died before her baby was born. Kit and Julie had basically raised themselves since their dad left and while their mother raised them, she essentially left them to raise themselves. Trying to be a better mother, Kit has adopted the attached parenthood method (the co-sleeping, never leave your kid’s side type of parenting) and can’t figure out why she is so depressed; her best friend Pete takes her away for the weekend to try and break through to her.

This book has gotten a ton of amazing reviews so I’m assuming I am just not the audience for it. I’m also sure if I discussed with someone or a group I could analyze it and have a great discussion. However, I am going to say that I didn’t enjoy it because it featured a main character and themes that generally grate on me. This just falls in a genre of books that I shouldn’t read and if I had known that I would not have picked it up (but sometimes there is no way to know). It’s heavily character driven and if you cannot stand the character it makes the read incredibly hard. The writing is good but, again not for me.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC to review

Absolutely a case of "it's not you, it's me." While I've enjoyed literary fiction about mothers and motherhood in the past, something about the writing style of this book just failed to grab me. I found myself unable to empathize with Kit, Gilda, or any of the other characters who populate this book. Given Kit's status as a bisexual mother grieving the loss of her sister, I was frustrated by how little I was able to connect with her character. It's so rare to see bisexual characters simply existing in ways that are unrelated to their bisexuality, and I was willing to give this book so many passes for that alone, but, in the end, something about it just didn't quite connect with me. I would still recommend this for anyone interested by the premise, though, as I definitely feel this is a real case of my personal experiences and expectations impacting my enjoyment of the book.

This was a great book! I very much enjoyed it and I look forward to reading the author’s next work! Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

I’m still not sure if I loved this or didn’t like it. But I know I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time. The book is the story of Kit, who is a new-ish mother and who is struggling to processes the death of her younger sister. We live mostly in Kit’s head, and different timelines and focuses shift, with no clear start and stop or beginning or end, they are all just woven in like a braid. Being in Kit’s head is tricky at times, and honestly, just tough to get through at certain points.

Some of the descriptions of how she thought about her own child and motherhood are some of the most real that I have read. And while I did not share a similar headspace with Kit after the births of my children, I did find small nuggets that really hit in a way that other books have never.

The ending was not what I was expecting, but I also don’t know how I would have done it differently. I didn’t love it, in that it seemed to just push a little too quickly after this long, languid (at times slog) of a narrative.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

You’ll either love this or hate it. If you can connect with the characters and the writing, as I believe I have, you’ll feel this really deeply. No other book has ever captured the actual stream of consciousness as this has.

We Were the Universe is ultimately about grief. A stay at home mother has to accept the death of her sister, while attending to her 2 year old. Skimming back and forth, past to present, we learn about a childhood and teenage years with her beloved sisters, as well as her current day to day.

It's a complicated story, and a refreshing look at motherhood.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Kit is a very compelling character. Even though I didn't relate to Kit as a married mother of a toddler, her stream-of-consciousness narration made me feel like I was right there with her. The way her sister's death and the past haunted Kit, almost as on a loop, felt very real and it was understandable that Kit was looking for an escape in others, even if what she really want to escape was *not* her child or her husband. Reading WE WERE THE UNIVERSE by Kimberly King Parsons felt like I was adrift with Kit; I found myself turning the pages quickly to see if Kit would reach some kind of landing or, at least, some kind of anchor. The end of the book was not what I expected; however, it felt right. Kit does not have a typical "character arc," but there is movement. That movement felt far more satisfying than a neatly tied-in-a-bow character arc. I'll definitely be recommending this to my (adult) writing students.

Let’s just call this my favorite 2024 release so far.

WWTU centers on Kit, a young mother in Texas who is trying to keep her shit together. She spends her days at home with her exuberant kid, navigating playground politics and trying to find pockets of time for a little adult distraction and relief. She’s screening phone calls from her hoarder mother who has always been a strained, less-than-stellar parent. She’s constantly haunted by memories of her dead sister, Julie.

On a trip to Montana to help her best friend get over his recent heartbreak, a little psychedelic chemistry fuels a full-blown trip of Kit racing back in time to see where it all went wrong with Julie. In the second half, the previous glimpses of the past become all-consuming as Kit can’t escape thoughts of her sister. They are recklessly intrusive, bombarding her mid-thought. In a life of dabbling in drugs and vices, this is one she can’t give up.

WWTU is filled with sex, drugs, and music, but also grief, shame, and exhaustion. Kit is juggling the frustrations and joys of motherhood as she navigates parenting when she never had strong parental figures growing up and so clearly still has an acute desire to be mothered herself. Kit is one of the best characters I’ve read in a minute. She’s messy and makes questionable choices but she’s raw and tangible. I don’t necessarily relate to her specific desires and thoughts, but I fully empathized with the tone of it all.

I wanted to like this book, but I couldn't relate to Kit and didn't really like her.
I think that this will be liked and talked about, but I didn't love it.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

DNF at 30%

The main character is kind of insufferable. Some of what she's feeling is super relatable (mom exhaustion is REAL, and undealt with grief is quite haunting), but a lot of what I read is her fantasizing abut screwing people other than her partner and wanting drugs. I really wanted to read the Montana portion because I'm from there, but it was difficult to even get through the first night there in the book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

After reading Kimberly King Parson's collection Black Light, I was curious to read what she would do with her debut novel We Were the Universe. Kit is a young mother who is struggling. She stays at home with her daughter who it appears she both caters to and is resentful of. Her husband is involved and they appear to have a pretty good marriage, though she thinks he cannot provide for their daughter like she can. Underneath this, is her continued grief about her younger sister Lisa's death that happened just prior to her daughter's birth. She also has a challenging relationship with her mother who has turned to hoarding after Lisa's death. While Kit sees a therapist, she is not open with him about her declining mental health. She is invited on a trip to Montana with her friend, which is sold as a way for him to get over a recent breakup. On the trip, Kit finds herself with night terrors and keeps feeling Julie's presence. It probably does not help that Kit enjoys psychedelics.

While this book explores some tough topics: grief, mental illness, motherhood, and guilt, I found it not really moving forward in plot. I had to triple check the length of this book because it was a slog to get through for me. I found Kit to be a frustrating character, and I did not get the description of this book that sold it as "darkly funny", as I found little to no humor in it.

Thank you to Knopf, via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

brilliantly written, wonderful story, everything is well thought out and the characters have great dimension
motherhood is such a fine line of a thing to discuss especially in the way this book has but it did SO well. sisterhood is also a kind of tricky, icky, sticky situation to write about and once again this author did so beautifully. i will be looking for more items published by this author.

This took me a while to pick up but i read it super fast. It’s about Kit, a young woman dealing with new motherhood and the loss of her sister and everyone’s problems falling to her. Loved gilda’s voice (her daughter) Loved kit. I started this on the train home from Ilana Glazer’s show and on the tail end of The Mother of All Things which are about adjusting to new motherhood and the constant labor that it seems only you’re able to perform but it was not repetitive at all and very well written and understandable. The one thing and this is just unlucky is I feel I’ve read sooooo many books with mothers who are hoarders and I feel like it’s becoming a big plot device but didn’t take away.

Love this Am so excited for what’s next from Kimberly King Parsons.

Thank you to Knopf and Netgalley for the Arc!!

This one didn't totally work for me, unfortunately! The premise sounded so interesting, and Parsons is clearly such a talented writer. I also tend to love "sad girl litfic" about messy, sometimes unlikable characters, so this seemed like it'd be perfect for me on paper, but I'm not sure why, I just couldn't fully get into the story. However, I would still recommend WE WERE THE UNIVERSE to fans of the types of books I mentioned—I definitely think it will resonate with a lot of readers! Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.