CHARACTER
The Most Fun We Ever Hadby Claire Lombardo

Marilyn Sorenson

Marilyn Sorenson

Quick Facts

  • Role: Matriarch of the Sorenson family; central emotional anchor of the novel
  • First appearance: “The Offspring” (/books/the-most-fun-we-ever-had/chapter-1-5-summary)
  • Key relationships: Husband David Sorenson; daughters Wendy Sorenson, Violet Sorenson-Lowell, Liza Sorenson, Grace Sorenson; grandson Jonah Bendt
  • Occupation/Identity: Former academic-in-the-making turned mother; later the owner of Mallory’s Hardware
  • Defining tension: Balances fierce devotion to family with a longing for privacy, autonomy, and purpose

Who They Are

Bold, tender, and occasionally at her limits, Marilyn Sorenson (née Connolly) embodies the contradictions of modern motherhood. Her marriage to David is the novel’s blazing center—an “unfathomable orb” that both stabilizes and unsettles their daughters. Marilyn “fell into motherhood without intent,” then spent decades learning how to be both the family’s gravitational force and a person in her own right. She is a “resilient product of money and tragedy,” whose clarity and compassion emerge most sharply in crisis.

She’s also vividly present on the page: athletic, freckled, and agelessly kinetic. At her eldest daughter Wendy’s wedding in 2000, she’s rendered with tactile specificity—calves taut under a green sheath, shoulders freckled and sunlit—and even in later years she bikes to the hardware store and tends her garden with a vigor that belies her age.

Personality & Traits

Marilyn combines steel and softness: she is instinctively nurturing yet secretly overwhelmed; pragmatic under pressure yet unabashedly romantic. Much of her power comes from her ability to choose generosity even when she’s exhausted.

  • Deeply nurturing: When Violet reveals her son, Marilyn reacts without hedging—“Of course we’ll take him” (Chapter 4). Her instinct isn’t deliberation but shelter.
  • Easily overwhelmed: The novel opens with her hiding from her own guests, drained by “the inconvenient presence of bodies, bodies beyond her control” (The Offspring). Her craving for solitude doesn’t cancel her love; it clarifies its cost.
  • Resilient and pragmatic: Having lost her mother early and lived with a father’s alcoholism, Marilyn manages calamities—Wendy’s overdose, David’s health scare—with outward steadiness, even when her inner life is storm-tossed.
  • Passionately in love: Her marriage is both model and mystery to the daughters, shaping their ideas about The Ideal vs. Reality of Love and Marriage. Marilyn’s desire isn’t a youthful phase; it’s a lifelong practice.
  • Independent streak: Running Mallory’s Hardware ushers in a new “prime” (Chapter 1). The store isn’t an escape from family but a counterweight, giving her a self she doesn’t have to share.

Character Journey

Marilyn’s arc spans four decades. In 1975 she’s an outspoken, smart undergrad, straining against a repressed upbringing until her charged meet-cute with David reroutes her life. She moves to Iowa, shelving academic ambitions to buoy his medical training. Early motherhood is isolating and “deeply exhausted” (Chapter 6); she is swallowed by the logistics and emotions of four daughters. As the girls grow, Marilyn becomes the home’s ballast—frustrated, yes, but unwavering. The empty nest cracks open space: she buys the hardware store, tastes a distinct happiness, and briefly drifts from newly retired David as her independence blooms. Jonah’s arrival pulls her back into hands-on caretaking; David’s heart attack reorders every priority. By the end, Marilyn has learned to hold both truths at once: she is the matriarch who feeds everyone else’s life and a woman with a life of her own.

Key Relationships

David Sorenson Marilyn’s marriage to David is the book’s bedrock—carnal, companionate, and enduring through fear and illness. Their private language and humor form a sanctuary, and the daughters measure (and sometimes resent) their own relationships against this blazing standard. Even their quietest moments—like sitting on the back stairs—glow with hard-won intimacy.

Her Daughters: Wendy, Violet, Liza, and Grace Marilyn knows each girl intimately and imperfectly. She worries about Wendy’s volatility, misses the depth of Violet’s pain, trusts Liza’s competence perhaps too readily, and is tenderly indulgent toward Grace, the “afterthought.” Her bewilderment—“How could you grow people inside your own body… and suddenly be unable to recognize them?” (The Offspring)—captures the novel’s central mystery of parenting.

Jonah Bendt Marilyn’s love for Jonah is immediate and uncomplicated. She offers him a home before anyone asks, creating the stability he’s never known. With Jonah she re-experiences motherhood’s stakes, but with the perspective—and mercy—of a grandmother.

Defining Moments

Marilyn’s turning points reveal her values: she chooses commitment over ego, presence over panic, and love over judgment.

  • Meeting David (1975) (Chapter 2): Mistaking him for a TA, she argues her grade with fierce clarity before discovering who he is. Why it matters: It sets their dynamic—intellectual equals drawn together by honesty, humor, and surprise.
  • Learning about Jonah (2016) (Chapter 4): Marilyn’s “Of course we’ll take him” collapses years of secrecy into a single moral decision. Why it matters: It defines her as the family’s safe harbor and resets the orbit of the entire clan.
  • David’s heart attack (2017) (Chapter 24): Terror clarifies devotion; Marilyn becomes an unshakeable presence through his recovery. Why it matters: It reaffirms that love is maintenance, not myth—and that her strength is most visible in crisis.
  • Second Thanksgiving, the back stairs (2017) (Chapter 34): A quiet inventory of their life together. Why it matters: The novel distills love into endurance and attention; Marilyn’s contentment arrives not as spectacle but as recognition.

Themes & Symbolism

Marilyn embodies the paradox of caregiving in a large family: she’s both the center of gravity and a person threatened with erasure. Her marriage symbolizes an ideal her daughters admire and fear, shaping their own experiments with intimacy and commitment. As the family’s keystone, she also crystallizes the theme of The Complexity of Family and Sisterhood—how love binds, blinds, and remakes everyone in its orbit.

Essential Quotes

“She’d fallen into motherhood without intent, producing a series of daughters with varying shades of hair and varying degrees of unease.” (Chapter: The Offspring)

  • Analysis: The sentence fuses accident and consequence—motherhood as something that happens to Marilyn before she can choose it. The “varying degrees of unease” foreshadows how each daughter reflects a different facet of her own unresolved questions.

“I think so much of making a relationship work has to do with choosing to be kind even when you may not feel like it. It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world but it’s much easier said than done, don’t you think?” (Chapter 9)

  • Analysis: Marilyn reframes romance as discipline rather than destiny. Her ethic of chosen kindness explains both the longevity of her marriage and her capacity to forgive her children’s missteps.

“It’s constant pain. It’s a parade of complete and utter agony, all the time, forever... It takes such a long time to realize that it’s worth it.” (Chapter 17)

  • Analysis: This is Marilyn’s clearest statement about parenthood: the cost is relentless, but meaning accrues over time. She rejects sentimental shorthand, insisting that worth arrives only through endurance.

“You didn’t ruin my life, Wendy. Quite the opposite. I can’t say that enough.” (Chapter 17)

  • Analysis: To Wendy’s self-blame, Marilyn offers radical reassurance. The line disentangles sacrifice from regret, redefining motherhood not as lost potential but as a chosen, cherished path.