One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

Genres: Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

"The smart choice of narrators Emma Galvin (One), Jesse Vilinsky (Two), and Rebecca Soler (Three) as the Mitchell triplets is entertaining in addition to their amazing synergy." -- Booklist (starred review)

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

From Laurie Frankel, the New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is, a Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, comes One Two Three, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry...and laugh again.

In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does...

Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed—tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne.

For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone’s seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they’ve been alive. Because it's hard to let go of the past when the past won't let go of you.

Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-grab-a-tissue novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it’s our daughters who will save us all.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Release date: June 8, 2021

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Print pages: 416

Sample

One



My first memory is of the three of us, still inside, impatient to be born. We were waiting, like at the top of those water slides you see at amusement parks on TV, slippery wet and sliding all over one another to see who got to go first, shivering, hysterical, mostly with laughing but a little with fear. The winner—me!—streamed away from the other two, excited to slide and smug because I got to be first but also a little scared to leave them and a little left out because of the time they’d get to spend alone together until it was their turn too. Not that I’ve ever been on a water slide.

School doesn’t start until tomorrow, and already I’m behind. Mrs. Shriver emailed us the prompt a month ago. “History and memory are unreliable narrators, especially in Bourne. Therefore, please write a 2-to-3-page essay on your earliest memory and its relation to what’s true.” You think I couldn’t possibly remember being born—that its “relation to what’s true” is something like third cousin twice removed—but maybe the reason most people don’t remember is because they were alone in there. We weren’t alone. We never were. Before we were our mother’s or ourselves, we were one another’s.

Mama was waiting outside, of course, so she can’t say for sure either. Most mothers of triplets don’t even try to give birth naturally. Most aren’t even allowed to try. But our mother is not like most mothers.

She remembers hours of screaming and pushing and pain, and she was alone then, after him, but before us. While she waited, she made a plan to give us all M names with escalating syllables so she would be able to keep us straight. She named me Mab—queen of the fairies, deliverer of dreams—baby number one.

Two came kicking and screaming a quarter hour later and needed two syllables. Mama must have been tired because she’d lost track of what day it was—evening had turned to night had turned to morning by then—and when they told her it was early Monday already, she named the baby that.

And then three came too slowly, no matter how our mother pushed. Typical, though none of us knew that at the time. Eventually, they had to go in and get her, but she got the good name, the normal one. Mirabel. It sounds like miracle.

It turned out we didn’t need such an elaborate system, though. No one has to count syllables to tell us apart.

When we were very little, Mirabel called us with her fingers. One for me, two for Monday, three taps on her armrest or right above her heart when she was talking about herself. Monday and I used these nicknames too after a while, since she and Mirabel can’t go by something shorter without invalidating the entire point, so that’s our triplet shorthand. One for me, Two for one, Three for the other.

Mrs. Shriver won’t believe the other part, though, that I remember being in utero. She’ll say, “I asked for an essay, Mab, not a short story.” But if memory’s so unreliable, who is she to say? If memory’s so unreliable, what’s the point of even asking the question?

Except I know the answer to that one. It’s important for us to exercise our memories in Bourne, to stretch and strengthen them—like brain yoga or mind aerobics—because one of the sad things that happens when almost everyone dies is there aren’t enough people left who remember why.


Copyright © 2021 by Laurie Frankel