Family [Hardcover]

Caroline Leavitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1987

Leavitt's extraordinary novel is the story of orphan Nick Austen's lifelong search for love and family with the three women in his life: his first love, his wife, and his teenaged daughter.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Jealousies has centered her new novel on a man's long struggle to feel part of a family unit. Orphaned at 12, Nick Austen spends his adolescence in a boys' home. The adult Nick easily falls into a career as a book salesman, but still he is haunted by the need to belong. Over several decades, Nick tries to form an idealized family through his relationships with women. The first is Dore, a teacher with whom he has a baby girl. Later there is Leslie, whom Nick marries and Robin, their daughter. Still later, Dore comes back on the scene. Nick is clearly intended as a sympathetic character, but the way he segues between the womenhedging his betsis manipulative and unattractive. A larger problem is the distanced perspective from which Nick's story is told. There is little dialogue, and the unemotional narrative tells too much and shows too little, lessening the novel's impact. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

After the precipitous deaths of his adoring parents at age 12, Nick Austen grows up in a home for boys. Having known love at an early age, he is hungry for companionship but awkward in accepting it. When he finds his first love, Dore, he happily settles into a life of relative domesticity. When their infant daughter dies, the relationship falls apart. Nick finds comfort in the arms of Leslie, who later becomes his wife and mother of another daughter. Though he is crazy about his wife and over-protective of his child, Nick unfortunately remains smitten with Dore. His naked emotions and idiosyncrasies are understandable and endearing. In fact, all the characters are portrayed sympathetically. Leavitt, author of Jealousies ( LJ 8/83), writes persuasively, making us care immediately about this family's interrelationships, struggles, and demise. Recommended.Kimberly G. Allen, Supreme Court Lib., Washington,
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co; First Edition edition (August 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877959048
• ISBN-13: 978-0877959045
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,855,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm the New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You, and the award-winning author of eight other novels. Pictures of You was a Costco "Pennie's Pick," a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick, and it was also on many Best of 2011 lists, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine, and Kirkus Reviews, which also put the novel on their Top Five Novels about Family and Love list. I've been writing since I was in grade school (I was the one who made up books and then wrote book reports for them.) I always knew I wanted to be a writer, though being a screenwriter came in a close second. I live for books and the movies and I teach writing at UCLA online, have private clients, and I'm a book critic for People and the Boston Globe. I'm deliriously happily married to the writer Jeff Tamarkin (his book, Got A Revolution: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane, was one of the top music books of the year) and we have a teenaged son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How wonderfully Ms. Leavitt connects the disconnected, December 6, 1999

By 

Abby Mendelson (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Family (Hardcover)

Family, Caroline Leavitt's fourth luminescent novel, snakes in and out of a group of interrelated lives. As we read of an orphaned boy, and travel through the characters' lives, we deeply feel the love and concerns of daily living. How wonderfully Ms. Leavitt connects the disconnected!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family, January 30, 2001

By 

S Lamy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Family (Hardcover)

If you want to curl up and read a good book - try this one. It's enjoyable, the characters are interesting and it's got a good plot. It's a five star book for sure.