“There’s not too much difference between one death and another…nearly all of us end up suffocated,” the narrator’s therapist says near the end of LIKE FAMILY, urging the narrator to stop talking about his dying housekeeper and focus instead on the (deteriorating) relationship with his wife. Ironically, what Paolo Giordano’s brief novel illustrates through this moment and dozens of other small scenes is that each death is determinedly not like every other. Each one is the culmination of a different, unique life, and each one results in a different sort of void being felt by those who are left behind.

The central character (besides the narrator, of course), is Mrs. A., a middle-aged widow hired by the narrator and his wife, Nora, to help out around the house during Nora’s difficult pregnancy. Almost before the young couple realizes it, Mrs. A. has been hired to stay on to help with the housework and the care of their new son, Emanuele.

"There are many moments in LIKE FAMILY when the thoughtful prose...will cause readers to pause and reflect on the role others play --- or have played --- in their own lives..."

Emanuele, who calls his beloved nanny “Babette” after the heroine of the short story and film, is perhaps the only member of the family who reacts with appropriate anger and sadness when Mrs. A. discovers she is battling lung cancer and must step away from the life of the family that has been like her own for the last several years. He’s certainly the only one of the three who allows himself to exhibit unfettered grief at her eventual death.

As for the narrator and Nora, Mrs. A.’s rapidly advancing illness and her subsequent withdrawal from the daily life of the family serve as a catalyst for the couple to reflect not only on the increasingly important role she has played in their lives but also on what, if anything, will be left of their family after she’s truly gone. The narrator wonders if now he will finally be able to pursue a job elsewhere instead of being chained to his dead-end physics research job; Nora wonders how all the housework will ever get done; and the reader (not to mention the narrator) wonders whether Mrs. A. has, in fact, been the glue holding this fragile young family together and what will happen to them now that she’s gone. At one point the narrator says, “Every love needs someone to witness and acknowledge it, to validate it, or it may turn out to be just a mirage.”

There are many moments in LIKE FAMILY when the thoughtful prose (translated from the original Italian) will cause readers to pause and reflect on the role others play --- or have played --- in their own lives, to think about how the loss of even the quietest, most taken-for-granted person would resonate far beyond their little corner of the world. There’s also a fair amount of nostalgia here --- Giordano admits in his opening that he once had a “Mrs. A.” in his own life --- but the clear, if elegiac, thinking about love and loss never becomes maudlin. Instead, LIKE FAMILY offers readers the opportunity to consider both the fragility and strength of love.