Tag: dysfunctional family
Review: The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
I enjoyed and appreciated this character-driven family drama by Claire Lombardo. I read it for my book club, which didn’t end up happening last month, and that was actually good because I never would have finished in time. It’s a long one — but…
Review: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
It seems fitting to discuss a book about therapy the day after Thanksgiving, a holiday that raises so many complicated family issues — though hopefully yours was lovely! This book has plenty of buzz already without my review, but I loved it. It’s unlike…
Review: All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy
I liked this book though it didn’t resonate emotionally as much as I expected it to. It’s a story of man in India who is recalling when his mother abandoned him as a child. Gayatri was a free-spirited artist who clearly felt constrained by…
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
This was my first introduction to Ann Patchett; I think I started Bel Canto some years ago and didn’t get very far, which is probably not the fault of the author. Commonwealth was widely regarded as one of the best novels of 2016, and…
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
The Nest is a story of four adult siblings in a dysfunctional family. They will come into a large inheritance (“the Nest”) when the youngest turns 40, which is in a few months. The problem is the oldest sibling, Leo, got into a car accident…
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell is one of my favorite writers, and this book may be one of her best. It’s about a very dysfunctional family suffering through a heatwave in 1976 London. Robert, the father, goes out one morning for a paper and doesn’t come back. …
