09/11/2023
In McCauley’s entertaining if overlong family saga (after My Ex-Life), a 30-something Chicago professor reckons with personal drama amid a professional crisis. Cecily, the subject of a Title IX case involving a student named Lee, receives an invitation from her mother Dorothy to visit her in Woodstock, N.Y. (Dorothy has attempted to lure Cecily by saying she’s finally ready to share the truth about Cecily’s paternity.) On the way, Cecily sees her uncle Tom, Dorothy’s brother, an architect and a surrogate father figure who looked out for Cecily when she was growing up with a single mother. Although Tom is struggling from a recent breakup and being forced to compromise on his newest architectural design, he welcomes her in Boston. Cecily happens to run into Lee at the airport, and Lee, who’s fixated on Cecily, claims that she wasn’t the one who lodged the complaint. Eventually, the story winds its way to Woodstock, where Dorothy makes some late-breaking yet unsurprising revelations. The dialogue is breezy, and Tom and Cecily are rendered dynamically, but McCauley loses focus in the overstuffed plot. This has its moments, but it’s not the author’s best. (Nov.)
An IndieNext Pick for January 2024
One of Pure Wow's “9 Books we can't wait to read in January”
Named one of Electric Literature's “42 Queer Books You Need to Read in 2024”
“As he has done for nearly four decades, McCauley weaves a witty social critique from the interplay between his characters and the day’s breaking news. . . McCauley’s gifts for prose, plot and provocation are likely to offer you a few fast-flying hours in his sunny, slightly futuristic world.”
—Meredith Maran, The Washington Post
“A wryly funny family drama interlaced with astute observations on aging and academia.”
—People
“You Only Call When You're in Trouble. . . offers readers not only the expansive gift of laughter but, also, a more expansive image of what family can be.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
“Shot through with bright dialogue and smart observations.”
–Joanne Kaufman, The Wall Street Journal
“Stephen McCauley sits on my I-know-it'll-be-funny-and-smart-about-people bookshelf right next to Elinor Lipman and Cathleen Schine. . . . McCauley is gifted at character details that are amusing but also help us understand why his people behave the way they do.”
—Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Big hearted and quick witted. A boisterous family drama laced through with razor-sharp insight, this book will make you laugh, think, and want to call your mom—or your golden-hearted gay uncle, if you happen to have one handy.”
—Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily
“This moving and bewitching novel will lift your mood, inspiring you to want to be a better person. McCauley is at the apex of his extraordinary gifts.”
—Brian Bromberger, The Bay Area Reporter
“Brimming with his characteristic wit and withering observations of human behavior — [McCauley’s] new book You Only Call When You're in Trouble tells the story of family bonds, and why we tend to load up on the louses in our lives.”
—WGBH, The Culture Show
“To find another book this year as affecting or as heartening . . . is going to be one difficult task.”
—Steven Whitton, The Anniston Star
“A wonderful book. Stephen McCauley is one of my favorite writers...the best at these dysfunctional, melancholy, but thrilling...social comedies.”
—Bill Goldstein, on NBC's Today in New York
“Every page pleases. . . .The story is beautifully written and replete with laugh-out-loud pronouncements. . . . Add to this fully realized, empathic characters (well, a few of them are real stinkers), and you have an unmitigated delight and a book that you'll hate to see end.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Another chronicle of modern disappointments and their occasional consolations from a master of the modern social novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“McCauley writes sentences that ring with the clear and true tones of melodies spun from crystal glassware. . . . This incandescent mixture of observational humor and humane characterizations makes Stephen McCauley worth calling on again and again.”
—Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness
“I read You Only Call When You're in Trouble at a moment when I needed to be around the intelligence and humanity of the novel's characters, and I'm still grateful for being so happily entertained and totally engrossed.”
—Francine Prose, author of Blue Angel and The Vixen
“McCauley’s novels are always a cause for celebration, and You Only Call When You’re In Trouble shows why.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost
“I can’t find the words to say how much I love You Only Call When You’re in Trouble. This perfect novel has profoundly moving observations of human nature, emotional acuity, and brilliant insights wrapped up in warmth and wit. I don’t think I will find a book I love more this year.”
—Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author
“Picture F. Scott Fitzgerald with tongue in cheek and you get the gift of Stephen McCauley's You Only Call When You're in Trouble. I loved these deliciously flawed characters and every thought that runs through their heads. As with all things Stephen McCauley, it has the highest of wit and the sharpest of social commentary plus tenderness and much love.”
—Elinor Lipman, author of Ms. Demeanor
“Stephen McCauley’s delicious new novel follows its characters, light on their feet as they search for their best selves. Along the way, they dodge with agility an assortment of contemporary obstacles—flagging relationships, employment insecurities, delusional parents. The author’s rare ability is finding the humor lining sadness to create a complex story with emotional depth.”
—Carol Anshaw, author of New York Times bestseller Carry the One
André Santana's impressive narration deals with one family's contemporary problems. Cecily, a college instructor, is currently under investigation for sexual misconduct with a student. Her manic mother, Dorothy, is trying to get her life on track with the assistance of a self-help guru by opening a spiritual retreat in Woodstock, New York. And her Uncle Tom is so obsessed with Cecily's well-being that his longtime partner has left him. When Dorothy invites Cecily to the opening of the retreat, all the dysfunction in the family comes to a head. The author's snarky comments about Woodstock, self-help retreats, and academia are delivered with nonjudgmental evenness. As one crisis bleeds into another, Santana's cool performance and objective distance make this entertaining listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
2023-10-07
Another chronicle of modern disappointments and their occasional consolations from a master of the modern social novel.
There are four main characters in McCauley's latest: Cecily, an academic embroiled in an investigation at her university; Tom, her gay architect uncle, also facing career trouble; Dorothy, Cecily's ditsy mom; and the town of Woodstock, in which Dorothy is about to open a retreat center with a self-help author, a rather horrible person, natch. McCauley's descriptive gifts shine in his evocations of Woodstock, where "almost every storefront along the main street was decorated with wind chimes, prayer flags, colorful pennants, or loose, billowing clothes for sale" and "in the middle of the tiny town green…was a drum circle and a group of gray-haired people in unstructured cotton pants doing what looked like interpretive dance." His story, in which Cecily and Tom make a pilgrimage to the opening of Dorothy's "more intimate, more affordable Omega Institute” and which revolves, per his usual, around secrets in the characters' lives, gives him plenty of opportunities to do what he does best, which is make pronouncements. "No one can do 'whatever they want to do,' and probably no one should," he plangently informs us. "When someone starts by telling you you can do 'whatever you want,' they end up forcing you to do what they tell you." That seems reasonable, but the author also delights in less defensible assertions. "Academia was the one institution it was always safe to insult, no matter what the political persuasion of the person you were talking to. Like capers, it was universally disliked." The emotional heart of the story is the profound devotion Tom feels for his niece, which at the opening of the book has caused his longtime partner to throw up his hands and move out. Even if we never quite believe this, and even if some other plotlines are also a little hokey, you don't have to care much about plot to enjoy a McCauley novel.
As the characters blunder about, the narrator is perfectly on his game.
