Wendy Sorenson

Quick Facts

Eldest Sorenson daughter; central provocateur of the novel’s family reckoning. First appearance: Chapter 1 (the failed lunch). Key relationships: husband Miles Eisenberg; sister Violet Sorenson-Lowell; nephew Jonah Bendt; parents Marilyn Sorenson and David Sorenson.

Who She Is

Bold, damaged, and disarmingly funny, Wendy Sorenson moves through the world with a practiced cynicism that both protects and imperils her. She’s the Sorenson sister most likely to call out hypocrisy and then light a match anyway. After losing Miles to cancer, grief becomes her climate—she breathes it, jokes through it, and occasionally weaponizes it. By tracking down Jonah and detonating a secret the family circled for years, Wendy thrusts herself to the center of The Complexity of Family and Sisterhood, forcing everyone (including herself) to confront what their love actually looks like in crisis.

Her physical presence—Gucci at her wedding, an “ill-advised black mermaid cut” at a fundraiser—reflects a woman both aware of and estranged from her own image. As a child dubbed “Wednesday Addams,” she was thin, brittle-looking; as an adult, she leads with force and money while her private life frays.

Personality & Traits

Wendy’s personality is a contradiction engine: raw grief braided with showy bravado, reckless choices paired with fierce loyalty. She craves an upper hand but also intimacy; she performs confidence while privately narrating her own collapse.

• Provocative, razor-witted: Finds “comfort in drama,” delights in unsettling banter, and aims jokes like darts. Example: telling a wedding guest she plans to “outlive everyone and spend [her] days reveling in a disgusting level of opulence.”
• Grief-stricken ritualist: Two years after Miles’s death, she still talks to him on the deck, exhaling “I love you” with cigarette smoke—habits that keep him near but also keep her life suspended.
• Impulsive and transgressive: She locates Jonah on a whim and, high and aggrieved, offers to take him in—an act driven by compassion, guilt, and a desire to control the narrative with Violet.
• Fiercely (if combatively) loyal: The only person who knew and protected Violet during the secret pregnancy; the bond is real even when the love arrives sharpened with competitiveness.
• Self-destructive coping: Drinking, smoking, and meaningless sex aren’t just vices; they’re strategies for avoiding the part of grief that requires patience and humility—qualities Wendy distrusts in herself.
• Image-aware but inwardly frayed: From wedding couture to fundraiser misfires, her aesthetic affluence contrasts with her chaotic interior life.

Character Journey

From the start, Wendy feels like the Sorenson outlier—the “first contraceptive accident,” the daughter misaligned with her parents’ shimmering marriage. Loving Miles gives her a version of that perfect story, and his death blows a hole through it, leaving her stranded between devotion and nihilism. Jonah becomes the turning point: tracking him down begins as a provocation and an attempt at control, but caregiving complicates her self-narrative as a “total fuckup.” When Jonah observes that she seems “chill,” he mirrors back the mask she’s been wearing, forcing her to reckon with the gap between her pose and her pain. Ultimately, she sends Jonah to her parents—a decision that looks like failure but functions as a pivot. It’s the first time she chooses stability for someone else over her need to win, opening the door to a self not defined solely by Miles’s absence or her own chaos.

Wendy’s arc slices across two major ideas: the drift between The Ideal vs. Reality of Love and Marriage and the combustive power of Secrets and Their Consequences. She once held an ideal; now she lives with its wreckage, and the secret she unearths becomes both her weapon and her path toward a more honest intimacy.

Key Relationships

• Miles Eisenberg: Miles is Wendy’s proof that epic love exists—and the measure against which all joys and sorrows are weighed. His death doesn’t end the relationship; it changes its terms. She continues to talk to him, clinging to rituals that sustain and haunt her, and every risk she takes afterward can be read as an argument with absence.

• Violet Sorenson-Lowell: “Practically twins,” they share history and a vow of secrecy, which curdles into rivalry once Wendy brings Jonah back. Their dynamic is magnetic and volatile: tenderness undercuts the meanness, and meanness guards the tenderness. When they finally trade cruelties, it isn’t just spite—it’s the grief of losing the one person who understands the worst and best of you.

• Jonah Bendt: With Jonah, Wendy rehearses a version of motherhood she never expected to try. She’s protective and profane, generous and erratic—giving him warmth and worldly savvy one minute, panic and withdrawal the next. Their bond exposes her (often hidden) gentleness and teaches her that care requires more than audacity.

• Marilyn and David Sorenson: Their marriage is the family’s lodestar and Wendy’s lifelong mirror. She experiences herself as the “marathon of disappointment,” yet also aches for their regard. Handing Jonah to them is both an admission—“they can do this better”—and an act of trust in the structure that once made her feel misfit.

Defining Moments

Wendy’s story moves through a set of catalytic scenes that peel back her bravado and force choice over performance.

• The Failed Lunch (Chapter 1): She orchestrates Violet’s reunion with Jonah, and Violet bolts. Why it matters: It reveals Wendy’s talent for controlled chaos—an explosive gesture meant to force truth-telling but also to seize power in a rivalry she’s tired of losing.
• “I could take him” (Chapter 4): High and outraged by the unfairness of Jonah’s life, she offers to raise him. Why it matters: An impulsive act becomes an ethical commitment, testing whether Wendy’s daring can mature into responsibility.
• The Patio Confrontation (Chapter 12): After Jonah calls her “cool,” she snaps—“I’m an adult, Jonah; I’ve been through more shit than— Christ.” Why it matters: The moment cracks the “chill” facade and exposes the mismatch between how she performs adulthood and how little control she feels.
• The Fight with Violet (Chapter 12): A vicious phone call ends with “I want nothing to do with you.” Why it matters: Their rupture is the cost of forcing the secret into daylight; it’s also the pain that makes honest reconstruction possible.

Essential Quotes

"I saw my dad yesterday. Retirement seems like kind of a disaster. He told me he was thinking about bird-watching. Can you imagine? I can’t picture him sitting still for that long."

Wendy’s humor masks (and reveals) her intimate reading of family members; the joke lands because she knows her father’s restlessness. The line also signals her discomfort with stasis—she mistrusts quiet, in others and in herself, preferring motion to contemplation.

"I hope you’re proud of me, dude," she said after a minute. "Because I am really trying to keep on around here, okay?"

Addressed to Miles, this plea collapses bravado into vulnerability. It shows grief as an ongoing relationship—she is still performing for his gaze, still chasing his blessing, which keeps her moving and keeps her stuck.

"I could take him, if you wanted," she said, emboldened by the weed, propelled forward by a vague, niggling sense of injustice. For this poor kid with his boring pipefitter name. For all the cracks he’d fallen through. And for the fact that—well, this gave her an upper hand over Violet for once, didn’t it?

The narration captures Wendy’s blend of altruism and competitiveness. She’s genuinely outraged on Jonah’s behalf, yet she also craves leverage; the offer is both care and strategy, illustrating how messy motives can still produce moral action.

"They’ll love you because you’re their grandson and they’re sadistic child collectors who delight in seeing their own genealogical inklings on the faces of malleable offspring."

This barbed reassurance to Jonah is classic Wendy—affection delivered via a jab. She mocks her parents’ prolific love to make Jonah feel secure, using cynicism as a strangely effective vehicle for comfort.

But now she worried she’d floated all the way to the other side of the spectrum, that she’d lost perspective on herself in possibly a more detrimental way, one that convinced her she was fine when in fact she was supremely fucked, shoplifting-Winona-Rider-level fucked, merely a mammoth bank account away from being drowned-rat-sewer-dwelling fucked.

Here, the interior monologue punctures her swagger. The hyperbolic spiral reveals self-awareness tinged with dread: Wendy knows the difference between looking functional and being well—and fears she’s chosen the former so convincingly she can no longer tell.