Family History [Hardcover]

Dani Shapiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

From the author of the best-selling memoir Slow Motion (“Chilling . . . her vision is unblinking”—New York Times Book Review; “Riveting . . . a breathtaking combination of candor and bravado”—San Francisco Chronicle), a ferociously paced new novel about a woman losing control of her life, her marriage, and her kids, and discovering that you can do everything right and still find the world you’ve made slipping away.
Rachel Jensen has it all: a husband she adores, challenging work in art restoration, a terrific teenage daughter, and a new baby on the way. Then her infant son is injured in an accident in her daughter’s arms, and that accident begets a terrifying lie. Set in a small Massachusetts town, Family History is about a family spiraling toward disintegration, the terrible force of guilt in children, and a mother’s nightmarish realization that she cannot protect her own child.

As the life the Jensens have so carefully built begins its slow collapse, we see with excruciating clarity the frailty of our strongest allegiances and the precarious ledge upon which our most vital relations—marriage, parenthood—are balanced. Family History blazes through this intimate and highly charged territory with stunning velocity, and marks a bold new step forward for the prodigiously gifted Dani Shapiro.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Family History, Dani Shapiro has written such a nail biter of a plot that it's easy to overlook just how good--and how literary--a novel this really is. Narrator Rachel Jenson is a housewife and art restorer married to Ned, a one-time painter. They live with their two children, 13-year-old Kate and 2-year-old Josh, in the small New England town where Ned grew up. In an elegant series of flashbacks, we learn of the emotional devastation teenage Kate has wrought. She was a perfect child growing up, but once Josh came along, her dark thoughts and tragic actions nearly destroy her family. As secret after secret is revealed, Shapiro gets perfectly Rachel's horror of daily life: how can you chat with the other moms at preschool when your world is falling apart? But what makes Family History a fine novel is its utter freedom from stereotype. Kate is bad, but she's never the bad seed; Ned's a failure, but he's not a total wash; Rachel's a narrator mired in tragedy, but she's a wry, slightly unreliable narrator mired in tragedy. Shapiro knows just how much hope to give her characters. In the end, their redemption is so slight that we actually believe in it. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

It's every parent's nightmare: you do your best, yet your child goes bad. With candor and tenderness, Shapiro (Playing with Fire) explores how a beloved, well-brought-up child can destroy a family. Rachel and Ned Jensen moved from a bohemian life in Greenwich Village to the Massachusetts town where Ned grew up when Rachel found herself pregnant with Kate. She hoped for a stellar career in art restoration; Ned was sure he'd find inspiration for his paintings in tiny Hawthorne. By the time Kate is a teenager, neither has occurred, but they're a happy family: Ned teaches at the Hawthorne Academy, Rachel works part-time; Kate is a beautiful, cheerful, popular 13-year-old. Then Rachel has another baby, Joshua, at age 39. Jealousy of her new brother, or some darker disturbance, turns Kate's ordinary teenage mood swings and shoplifting escapades into more venomous rebellion. After an accident occurs when Josh is in Kate's care, she spirals out of control, and makes wild accusations that do terrible damage to the Jensens' lives. The gripping narrative has the deeply felt emotional fidelity of a true story; it's a book some readers will finish in one sitting. The physicality of Rachel's maternal love-the need of a mother to touch her child, to feel it breathe-is almost palpable. Shapiro writes luminously about marital love and contented domestic routines, and with brutal insight about the corrosive misery of guilt and shame. Crafted with assurance, this novel holds a mirror to contemporary life.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375415475
• ISBN-13: 978-0375415470
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,427,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dani Shapiro's most recent books include the novels Black & White and Family History and the bestselling memoir Slow Motion. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Elle, Vogue, Ploughshares, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications. She lives with her husband and son in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Fast Read!, May 2, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Family History (Hardcover)

How could a family and a marriage fall apart after so many happy years? Rachel Jensen finds out in Dani Shapiro's novel FAMILY HISTORY, the story of her family and how they deal with a child that shows signs of mental illness. The book opens with Rachel sitting in her house alone, watching home movies taken by her husband Ned. She stares at the movie screen and sees herself and her family, yet she does not recognize them. The happy smiles and laughter that she is watching is from a lifetime ago. She still has not adjusted to her new life without her husband or her daughter Kate. The smiles and laughter are only memories. The only remnant of her family is her young son Joshua, who lives with her in this house. He is far too young to really understand how bad things are for his parents and he does not know that he has a sister named Kate. For most of Joshua's life, Kate has not lived with the family.

Rachel goes downstairs to check her phone messages and listens to one that asks her to go to Stone Mountain in regards to Kate. Whatever the news is, Rachel is dreading to hear it. There could be no good news if they are calling her about Kate.

How did things get to this point? The bulk of the story is told in flashbacks. As the story line slowly progresses and the appointment at Stone Mountain approaches, the reader learns about Ned and Rachel's courtship and their romantic dreams of being artists before their children were even a glimmer in their eyes. The two of them lived in New York and, while trying to make their artistic dreams come true, Rachel learns she is pregnant. With the help of Ned's parents, who also happen to be very wealthy, they buy a fixer-upper near his parents' home in Massachusetts. It's away from the big city and closer to her in-laws, who could help them out as the two of them try to make a new life for their new family. Rachel sees this move as a big change --- along with her pregnancy --- and it becomes one of the pivotal points in their lives.

We learn about Kate, who had shown much promise of a bright future. We learn about the event that ultimately sends Kate away from her family, because she is too unstable to be cared for at home by her parents. Neither Ned nor Rachel saw the signs that led to this event. They did not see the signs that would have told them that Kate would start to go through a transformation, from happy-go-lucky preteen to sullen and moody teenager. Close friends said it was just a phase all girls go through and Rachel believed it for a while. Then things started to get worse.

They did not predict the unexplainable tantrums and mood swings Kate would begin to experience: her foul language at home, shoplifting incidences and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Again, this all could have been a phase that Kate was going through. No one would have believed that things would get so bad that Kate would have the power to break apart and destroy their family and nearly ruin a marriage and a love that should have lasted throughout the years. Ned and Rachel are united in their love and care for Kate, but when Kate reveals the ultimate accusation at her father, their lives are torn apart.

FAMILY HISTORY sounds like a complex psychological drama built around a family that is falling apart. Part of the story is just that, but there are other layers to this book. The relationship with mother and daughters is a secondary plot as we compare Rachel's relationship with her own dysfunctional mother to that of her own relationship with Kate. The study of a marriage is another subplot --- how two people who thought they knew each other so well become total strangers overnight. All these factors helped make this a very fast read for me, but overall I enjoyed the way Dani Shapiro writes. She made these characters seem familiar to me; I felt close to all of them, as if I was the friend or family that surrounded them. I finished this book in a record 24 hours. That's how much I enjoyed this book. This reviewer highly recommends FAMILY HISTORY and looks forward to reading Dani Shapiro's other novels.

--- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A family falling apart, April 29, 2003

By 

Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Family History (Hardcover)

FAMILY HISTORY by Dani Shapiro

FAMILY HISTORY is a story of a woman's struggle to keep her family together and herself sane after a series of events threatens to hurt her marriage and tear it apart.

Rachel Jensen at one point in her life was able to say that she had the perfect life. She was not financially rich by any means, but she could vouch that her family was a happy one, and her marriage was solid and full of love and laughter. There wasn't anything she felt she lacked monetarily, and this was important to her, since throughout their marriage they had to prove to their parents that they could indeed make it financially on the type of dreams they were shooting for. She knew she was the envy of others, and would never have thought that this world that she was familiar with was about to come crashing down around her.

The book opens to a scene with Rachel sitting alone in her bedroom, wallowing in self-pity as she watches old home movies of her husband and her daughter Kate laughing and smiling. It is a movie of happier times, before the baby was born, and before their daughter Kate started to change right before their eyes.

The reader knows immediately that there is something terribly wrong, as she is sitting in her bedroom alone in the dark. Her husband no longer lives with her, and their daughter has not lived with them in quite a while. All that is left in her life is baby Josh, and he is far too young to comprehend that anything is wrong with their family.

The destructive events that occur that destroy the harmony of the family are centered on Kate, who by this time is a young teenager going through a lot of extreme emotional and behavioral changes. Rachel is told that this is just a phase all teenagers go through, and Rachel believes it for a while, but when Kate's behavior becomes so hard to manage, Rachel is not sure what to think anymore.

The book is told in parallel - we see flashbacks of her courtship with her husband Ned and their early years together in New York. At the same time we are back in the present day, where Ned and Rachel are worrying about the future of their daughter Kate, who is in an institution for troubled young adults. I felt this method of story-telling helped keep the action moving, and kept my interest in the characters alive as I got to know them starting from their younger years together and through their current messed up lives.

The climax of events leads to a horrible accident that could have been prevented, and that event in turn leads to yet another horrible incident that causes the break up of the family. It is a living nightmare that they are going through, and no one knows if there is any relief in sight.

FAMILY HISTORY by Dani Shapiro is a book that was so intense that it was probably the fastest read I've had in a long time. It's one of those books that you can't put down. I want to compare this book to Elizabeth Berg's best novels, which often center on strong women or women who are trying to find themselves and make new lives for themselves. In FAMILY HISTORY, we have a woman that thought her love was strong enough to deal with any obstacle, but finds her love is tested because of a child that is ill. I'm giving this an enthusiastic thumbs up, and am willing to read any other book that has been penned by Dani Shapiro.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True, January 23, 2004

By 

Lisa Jane (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Family History (Hardcover)

When I picked up 'Family History' at the local library, I groaned inwardly at such a title and thought it might be boring.

Then I started reading it at 11pm last night in bed and at 6pm the next day, I'm almost finished. I've never read a Dani Shapiro novel before, but found this book brilliant because it's true and believeable. As a teenager with chronic depression, I can feel for both Rachel and her daughter Kate.

When Rachel and Ned, her husband, pick up Kate from summer camp, they find Kate to have changed, and what they see ends up becoming the tip of the ice-berg. It's difficult for Kate to tell her parents how she feels, and within my depression I have felt much the same way. There are good and bad times throughout it, and though Kate obviously has a far worse mental illness, crossing the border into schizophrenia, I can feel her pain.

I suspect Rachel also suffers from depression, but it is less obvious to her, and I am able to feel her pain as well, as in my darker days I think everyone's lives are far better than mine (though I've got a good life, wonderful family and friends.)

For these reasons, I've thoroughly enjoyed 'Family History' and am rather upset to be almost at its end.