The summer months may turn up the heat, but nowhere as profoundly as within extended families that come together to share vacation time. No matter the idyllic setting or good intentions, when loved ones gather, fireworks often ensue--making for some great drama on the page.
In The Red House by Mark Haddon, estranged British
siblings Richard and Angela reunite at their mother's funeral. Afterward,
Richard, a wealthy physician with a new wife and a wretched teenage daughter,
invites Angela, her feckless husband and their three teenage children to his big
country home in Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border. As the polyphonic narrative
unfolds, the reader comes to realize that these eight people--with vastly
different personalities, operating systems and agendas--have brought a lot more
baggage with them than meets the eye.
Fourth of July weekend in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts is
the backdrop for The World Without You by Joshua Henkin. Shared grief
and mourning unite the Frankels--a large, mostly nonobservant Jewish-American
family--as they gather for a weekend at their parents' vacation home to unveil
the gravestone for their brother Leo, a journalist and adventurer killed in Iraq
a year earlier. But once everyone is settled beneath the same roof, the memorial
becomes shrouded by sibling rivalries and marital feuds in this story of love,
loss and the true meaning of family in the aftermath of tragedy.
Catholic guilt, alcoholism and bad choices are the
undercurrents that propel J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine. The story is told via the distinct viewpoints
of three generations of women from the Irish-American Kelleher clan who
assemble, with their respective families and significant others, for their
annual summer retreat at a cottage set on three acres of Maine beachfront
property. Over the course of a month, family secrets are gradually unveiled that
probe the relationships between the women, blurring the line between love and
anger.
Note: This
article is a reprint and is being posted with the permission
of
Shelf
Awareness. To read
this piece as published on
Shelf
Awareness for Readers
(8/3/12),
link
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