I don’t know anyone who thinks their family is simple and uncomplicated, but some families are more complex than others. They’re tough households to live in maybe, but they’re gangbusters to read about.
by Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai gives us lots of really interesting families in this novel: the sweeping multi-generational, international epic variety, the brother-and-sister-against-the-world variety, the ones we choose ourselves in times of love and change, the ones thrust upon us in times of crisis and chaos.
It’s a revelatory study in contrasts. I loved all the families in this novel and everything else about it too.
by Karen Joy Fowler
I don’t even want to tell you anything about Karen Joy Fowler’s wonderful novel except this: go read it. Try to find out as little as you can before you do. Don’t read the back of the book. Don’t even look at the cover. Just read it.
That way you’ll preserve the twist, and it’s amazing, but it’s only the beginning of what I love about this novel. It’s brilliant and insightful and life-changing and has at its heart one very unusual — but in other ways totally typical — family.
by Dawn Davies
Speaking of twists, they’re not the sort of thing you expect from a memoir, but damn if Dawn Davies doesn’t pull one off that’s completely breathtaking.
Along the way to it, the book is full of beautifully written, compelling told, achingly funny stories about family, plus writing, motherhood, partnerhood, and adulthood that called to me long, long after I finished reading.
by Shobha Rao
And speaking of unusual families, Shobha Rao does a gorgeous, heartbreaking job of showing how little blood has to do with it.
The two-person family at the heart of this novel isn’t actually related or really even chosen, and yet I cannot think of a more beautiful look at the lengths families will go to to find and love one another and to stay together come what may.
by Tayari Jones
Sounds straightforward, right? It isn’t. At all. Which is what makes Tayari Jones’s novel such a great read and such a moving exploration of what marriage and family mean, in America right now, and everywhere always.
