A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers.
The Lamberts â Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children â are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to Parkinsonâs. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas.
âCompellingly readable, funny and above all generous spiritedâDaily Mail
âA novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insightâFinancial Times
âA big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funnyâIndependent
THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER âA genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first centuryâElle âFunny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligentâGuardian