Book - BookDetective

Name: Nuclear Family

Full name: Nuclear Family: A Tragicomic Novel in Letters

Author: Susanna Fogel
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Genres/categories:
Fiction, Humor

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ISBNs:
9781250165237
1250165237

From filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Susanna Fogel comes a comedic novel about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents, over the course of three decades. Told entirely in letters to a heroine we never meet, we get to know the Fellers through their check-ins with Julie: 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.

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.