Same As It Ever Was: A Novel

Same as It Ever Was is a domestic fiction novel told in third-person limited perspective entirely from the point of view of the protagonist, Julia Ames. Domestic fiction is a genre that focuses on a family unit and their experiences. Often, contemporary domestic fiction is told from the point of view of a female protagonist and her experience creating an ideal home life. As writer Deborah Levy puts it, “We [women] had a go at cancelling our own desires and found we had a talent for it. And we put a lot of our life’s energy into creating a home for our children and our men” (Levy, Deborah. Things I Don’t Want to Know. Bloomsbury, 2018, p. 16). The struggle of women, particularly mothers, to conform to or reject societal expectations in the home is a classic literary trope and the core conflict at the heart of Same as It Ever Was. Julia Ames consistently chastises herself for not being good enough at creating a utopian homelife for her family, in part because of her own troubled childhood.

The novel focuses in particular on life in the suburbs, a familiar