…[a] remarkably astute comic novel…Dean has perfect pitch when it comes to sending up the British working class, but she sneaks in just enough grace to give her characters a chance to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong…
—The Washington Post
A highly entertaining, vivid evocation of love and marriage… Dean’s characters have the rough edges and surprising grace of real people, and her fierce humanism animates every page.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Remarkably astute… Dean has perfect pitch [and] she sneaks in just enough grace to give her characters a chance to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong: As long as you don’t expect anyone to get out the good china, you can go home again.” –The Washington Post
“Glorious hell breaks loose in the devilish, dauntingly talented hands of this award-winning writer.” –Elle
“Razor-sharp.” –Entertainment Weekly
“Brilliant… [Dean’s] insights are dazzling… Characters rake themselves through self-revelations, and the prose leaps with a fervor for the present moment.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Vividly imagined and surprisingly funny… Call it sentimental if you like, but it’s also sweet and genuine and universally true.” –Associated Press
“It's compelling territory, to be sure. Fans of Jonathan Franzen know that families are crucibles for big questions, namely: What does it mean for the self to love and commit to another? And how do the boundaries get drawn, and redrawn?” . . . "dazzling. . . Characters rake themselves through self-revelations, and the prose leaps with a fervor for the present moment.”
“Dean’s razor-sharp observations, coupled with her very real affection for her characters, makes the pages fly.”
“Dean’s dialect will keep you entertained as these distinctly English characters, like ensemble actors, explore the light and dark sides of relationships, memory, death and the deep pull of family love.”
"It may be true that you can never go home, but as Ms. Dean observes in this poignant and funny novel, you can never really run away, either. . . Ms. Dean writes sentences that are muscular in their support of the larger story and beautiful in their own right."--(Sussanah Meadows)
"The particulars of southeastern England may be foreign to American readers, but the leap away from home and its lingering regrets are not." . . . "We're all sentimental about our own families and maybe have the right to be. They are the first people we love deeply, before the complications of the rest of our lives. . . Call it sentimental if you like, but it's also sweet and genuine and universally true."--(Chad Roedemeier)
"Dean mercilessly sends up the working class to hilarious effect even as she compassionately reveals, in fresh and vivid language, the primal desire to return home."
A dark yet sometimes rocking comedy from British social satirist Dean (The Idea of Love, 2009, etc.) about a posh British lawyer who has spent most of his life running away from his crude, working-class family.
His parents divorced after teenager Nick, already an intellectual golden boy embarrassed by his parents, ratted out his father Ken for adultery. Nick's sweet-natured, less favored younger brother Dave went to live with Ken, while Nick stayed with their eccentric, angry mom Pearl before he escaped to university. More than 20 years later, Dave, who has remained the family mediator, talks Nick into a reunion with Ken. At 80, Ken has decided he will be dying soon and wants Nick's help in divorcing his second wife June. By turns nasty and maudlin, Ken still infuriates Nick, but Nick is also feeling delayed guilt about his past behavior. On vacation with his live-in girlfriend, spa owner Astrid, Nick runs into a girlfriend he treated badly in his youth and faces what a snob he was even then. Mistakenly jealous and misreading Nick's feelings, Astrid is afraid that Nick will decamp if her looks and youth continue to fade. He worries that he is not up to playing stepfather to Astrid's troubled daughter Laura, to whom he has unexpectedly become devoted. Meanwhile, Ken's infatuation with a kindly middle-aged funeral-home director leads him to an unexpected meeting with Pearl and the rekindling of passion, no less intense for being geriatric. Some scenes—like Ken's trip with his sons to Wales in search of June, whom Ken (mistakenly) suspects has stolen his money—have a madcap energy reminiscent of Joyce Cary novels, while Nick and Astrid's complicated duet shows how difficult it can be to achieve intimacy. The rural working-class British dialect may be difficult for American readers to comprehend, but the tartly sweet rewards are worth the challenge.
Dean's acerbic affection for her characters and her social commentary are both spot-on and surprisingly poignant.
