Family Affair
by Amy Shearn
The new novel from Eliza Minot, the baby of the tangled and preternaturally gifted Minot clan (including her older sister, writer Susan Minot), tells the story of, um, a tangled and preternaturally gifted clan. In The Brambles (Random House, $23.95), there are three grown siblings: Margaret, a harried suburban mother of three; Max, a new father chafing under his responsibilities; and Edie, who loves her single life in the city but also feels a kind of emptiness and struggles with an eating disorder. The scattered siblings are drawn together first by their dying father and then by the revelation of a secret that's been roiling beneath the family's placid surface for years. Minot's writing is lyrical and lucid, particularly in the passages dedicated to the beautiful messes that crowd Margaret's days — children and gardens and exhaustion and love. Above all, this unsentimental, fully felt book is about "the way life threads itself through change." By the end, you'll be wishing the warm, witty Brambles would enfold you into their brood, or at least invite you to dinner.
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Family Affair
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