Synopses & Reviews
Roy, a psychotherapist, and his first wife, Bea, a caterer, are the linchpins of an extended family dispersed throughout an apartment building on New York's Upper West Side. Around them cluster their four children with assorted friends and lovers; Roy's next two wives, one of them stolen from a neurotic parent; and Bea's lover (the Russian emigres superintendent), lesbian artist sister, and
caustic mother.
Blending satire and sympathy, Lynne Sharon Schwartz takes aim at contemporary social and sexual behavior as this confused but clever cast of characters, with their entanglements and betrayals, seeks love and happiness in the free- for-all nineties. Blinded by self-deception, and driven by self-gratification, they couple and uncouple as they struggle to redefine the idea of family. In the
Family Way combines the frothiness and bounce of a sitcom with the literary elegance of an accomplished and wryly serious writer. Jane Austen would definitely approve.
About the Author
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of eleven books, including the novels
The Fatigue Artist and
Leaving Brooklyn and two short story collections. Her work has been anthologized in
The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, and many other places, and her reviews, essays, and satirical pieces have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. Her books have been nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives in New York City.
Praise for Lynne Sharon Schwartz:
"Lynne Sharon Schwartz fixes upon the world an anthropologist's clear eye, as though the contemporary, familiar-seeming people she writes about were members of a lost tribe whose habits and ways she has documented." --Daphne Merkin, Los Angeles Times