Description:
From filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Susanna Fogel comes a comedic novel about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents. Told entirely in letters to a heroine we never meet, we get to know the Fellers through their check-ins with Julie over the course of three decades: their thank-you notes, letters of condolence, family gossip, and good old-fashioned familial passive-aggression.
Together, their missives--some sardonic, others absurd, others heartbreaking--weave a tapestry of a very modern family trying (and often failing) to show one another they care.
The titular "nuclear family" includes, among many others, a narcissistic former-child-prodigy father who has taken up haiku writing in his old age and his new wife, a traditional Chinese woman whose attempts to help her stepdaughter find a man include FedExing her silk gowns from Filene's Basement; their six-year-old son, Stuart, whose favorite condiment is truffle oil and who wears suits to bed; and Julie's mother, a psychologist who never remarried but may be in love with her arrogant Rabbi and overshares about everything, including the threesome she had with Dutch grad students in 1972.
Brief description:
Bailey Carr is a New York City-based audiobook narrator. She graduated with a BFA in acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Bailey has narrated audiobooks for multiple New York Times bestselling authors.
Review Quotes:
"Fogel's novel offers plenty of glimpses--both humorous and endearing--into the life of a single woman with a well-meaning, if clueless, family."
-- "Publishers Weekly"