Synopses & Reviews
Pete Dizinoff has spent years working toward a life that would be, by all measures, deemed successful. A skilled internist, he's built a thriving practice in suburban New Jersey. He has a devoted wife, a network of close friends, and an impressive house, and most important, he has a son, Alec, on whom he's pinned all his hopes. Pete has afforded Alec every opportunity, bailed him out of close calls with the law, and even ensured his acceptance into a good college.
But Pete never counted on the wild card: Laura, his best friend's daughter — ten years older than Alec, irresistibly beautiful, with a past so shocking that it's never spoken of. When Laura sets her sights on Alec, Pete sees his plans for his son not just unraveling but being destroyed completely. Believing he has only the best of intentions, he sets out to derail this romance and rescue his son. He could never have foreseen how his whole world would shatter in the process.
Lauren Grodstein delivers a riveting story in the tradition of The Ice Storm, American Beauty, and Little Children, charting a father's fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
Review
"[S]uch an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals....Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant, A Friend of the Family will leave you shaken and chastened — and grateful for the warning." Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Review
"Stunning....An unqualified success....Grodstein's sentences are finely made and precisely fitted to one another and her story....If there's any justice in the world, A Friend of the Family will be her breakout book....She has written a novel that will leave her reader sitting up, sifting the evidence in the dead of night." David Thoreen, The Boston Globe
Synopsis
Pete Dizinoff, a skilled and successful New Jersey internist, has a loving and devoted wife, a network of close friends, an impressive house, and, most of all, a son, Alec, now nineteen, on whom he has pinned all his hopes. But Pete hadn't expected his best friend's troubled daughter to set her sights on his boy. When Alec falls under her spell, Pete sets out to derail the romance, never foreseeing the devastating consequences.
In a riveting story of suburban tragedy, Lauren Grodstein charts a father's fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
Synopsis
"Unfolds with suspense worthy of Hitchcock . . . Grodstein is a terrific storyteller." --The New York Times Book Review
Pete Dizinoff, a skilled and successful New Jersey internist, has a loving and devoted wife, a network of close friends, an impressive house, and, most of all, a son, Alec, now nineteen, on whom he has pinned all his hopes. But Pete hadn't expected his best friend's troubled daughter to set her sights on his boy. When Alec falls under her spell, Pete sets out to derail the romance, never foreseeing the devastating consequences.
In a riveting story of suburban tragedy, Lauren Grodstein charts a father's fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestseller that "unfolds with suspense worthy of Hitchcock . . . Grodstein is a terrific storyteller." --The New York Times Book Review Pre-order author Lauren Grodstein's new simply can't-be-missed novel, We Must Not Think of Ourselves, coming November 28, 2023. A truly unforgettable story about the fight for life--and love--in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Pete Dizinoff, a skilled and successful New Jersey internist, has a loving and devoted wife, a network of close friends, an impressive house, and, most of all, a son, Alec, now nineteen, on whom he has pinned all his hopes. But Pete hadn't expected his best friend's troubled daughter to set her sights on his boy. When Alec falls under her spell, Pete sets out to derail the romance, never foreseeing the devastating consequences.
In a riveting story of suburban tragedy, Lauren Grodstein charts a father's fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
Synopsis
Grodstein delivers a riveting story in the tradition of The Ice Storm, American Beauty, and Little Children, charting a father's fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
About the Author
Lauren Grodstein's books include the novels
and
Reproduction is the Flaw of Love and the story collection
The Best of Animals. Her pseudonymous Girls Dinner Club was a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.
Her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Turkish, and other languages, and her essays and stories have been widely anthologized.
Lauren teaches creative writing at Rutgers-Camden, where she helps administer the college's MFA program. She lives with her husband and son in New Jersey.