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by Erik Fassnacht
Meet the Brunsons of Downers Grove, Illinois. Henry is the once-magical father, whose fear of aging and endangered career lead him to the nightclubs of Chicago's Viagra Triangle. His wife Julie struggles to reclaim her life with a bottle of Zoloft and dreams of her youthful independence. Charlie, the golden-boy son, leaves the lucrative job his father arranged to serve in Afghanistan - and returns angry, damaged and uncertain of his place in the world. And Barkley, the bumbling youngest, is an aspiring writer of geeky science fiction stories now interviewing for his first job at a forbidding Catholic high school.
When Henry's health abruptly declines, he tries to return to the home and the life he had dominated. But his family, once totally dependent on his love, physical strength, and income, no longer needs him. As Julie, Charlie, and Barkley begin to find their ways forward, Henry tries desperately to bring them back together. In the end, each one will arrive at a new understanding of what family can - and cannot - be. Unusually assured and perceptive, combining narrative drive with humor, insight, and powerful family dynamics, A Good Family is a memorable debut by former high school teacher Erik Fassnacht.
"Fassnacht's debut works as a read-alike for both Jennifer Weiner and Jonathan Franzen for the way it so convincingly melds domestic drama, suburban angst, and beautifully descriptive writing." - Booklist
"This familial drama is a bit long on descriptive exposition, the author keeps the gears turning as all four characters contribute their separate strifes and their own means of resolution. Fassnacht has created a relatable quartet of interconnected characters in this engrossing and lucid work." - Publishers Weekly
"This is a readable debut whose lapses into triteness betray the author's youth even as they belie his potential." - Kirkus
"A Good Family is an intense, compassionate and very funny book. This is a sharply observed, deeply satisfying novel: a joy, a discovery." - Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry
"A Good Family is a crowd-pleasing, affecting, and compassionately written novel filled with a memorable cast of characters that readers will cheer for and cry with." - Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Beneath the Bonfire
This information about A Good Family was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Erik Fassnacht was born and raised in Chicago. He attended college at the University of Iowa before becoming a high school English and creative writing teacher. Spurred by a lifelong desire to write, he left teaching to get his MFA at Columbia College, where he wrote his debut novel, A Good Family.
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