Customer Reviews

The Family Tree

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
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Ever since reading Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I have been hoping to find a writer to match Kate Atkinson. Some have come very close (Barbara Trapido, Hillary Mankell, Tom Perrotta). Now comes Carole Cadwalladr. She performs that most delicate of juggling acts -- keeping at least three stories spinning along, with each generation, each decade being presented in all its silliness. As one reviewer pointed out, it helps to have lived in all the times depicted, which is one of the reasons why I can relate to the story so strongly. I look forward to Cadwalladr's next book as eagerly as I anticipate future offerings from Atkinson, Trapido, and Mankell.

The Family Tree is that rare book: a novel that moves you, makes you laugh, forces you to read on (I stayed up until 3am as I just couldn't put it down), and stays with you long after you've finished the final page.

It's so unusual to come across a book that is not only so humorous (the depiction of the wilder shores of 1970s suburbia is hilarious), but also so intelligent. The Family Tree raises all sorts of questions about family, class, sex, relationships, race, genes, popular culture...yet it never feels forced or artificial. By plotting three generations of the same family, these questions occur naturally: how much of who we are is determined by our genes? By our upbringing? By the TV we watched? By our memories?

At the heart of the book is the question of nature versus nurture. Rebecca Monroe, the central character, has two strikes against her: naturewise, she's possibly inherited her mother's unstable genes; nurturewise, she is haunted by the guilty knowledge that she was in some way responsible for the breakdown of her family.

As a graduate student studying popular culture, she relates incidents from her 70s childhood (the child's eye view of her parent's marriage is only ever half right), weighing up too, the impact of Dallas, Love Story and Charlie's Angels. She tries to understand not only her personal history but also how the age in which she grew up has influenced and affected her (furtively reading her feminist aunt's copy of The Joy of Sex and trying to imitate Lady Diana's hairstyle, for example). Her husband, on the other hand, a geneticist, believes that personality is simply a by-product of our DNA.

It's a great and satisfying read that defies categorisation. Cadwallader's understanding of the workings of family is reminiscent of Anne Tyler or Carol Shields. While the high comedy of the 1970's scenes has shades of David Sedaris. But, it's the ending that lifts the Family Tree into a class of its own - a moving, poignant, finale that left me gasping for more.

The unique manner in which this book is format is distinctive yet sometimes confusing. Rebecca is writing her thesis for her postdoctoral degree on the influences of television on families in the 1970s. Amidst the flashbacks to her childhood, when Rebecca inserts her husband Alistair's scientific opinions about one's DNA it drags down the well-told story. Every time Alistair appears you question why did she marry him? Rebecca's childhood habit of reading the dictionary comes into play at the start of every chapter. The whimsical inserts of words and their definitions are distracting at times. Family tree is the story of three generations of women and the men they married and the ones they loved. The national fervor for the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana pushes the Arnold household into a crazed frenzy and to the brink. It is heartwarming to see the love between generations, and it is easy to be empathetic to those with broken relationships. An inimitable story told in a way that you have to catch your breath when you have finished.

At times it can seem that we're awash in stories dealing in introspection, with characters digging into the past in order to come to terms with the present. While, quite broadly, that is the focus of this estimable debut novel, The Family Tree is far above the ordinary. Ms. Cadwalladr, a British journalist, has fashioned a story rich in perception, tinged with comedy, and flawlessly delivered.

That's quite an order for a voice performer to fulfill but dancer/actress Josephine Bailey is more than up to the task. Born in London, her reading is assertive yet also conveys the vulnerability found in narrator Rebecca Moore.

Weaving together the stories of three generations allows Rebecca to explore her past in an effort to find out precisely who she is and what she's about. She is, most certainly afraid of being like her mother who took her own life. Rebecca wants to know why her mother did this. For her husband, Alistair, it's simply a matter of genetics. He can find an explanation for human behavior in science.

Rebecca isn't at all willing to accept that, dismissing it as too facile. What about free choice? And, what about her marriage when it is discovered that there are very basic disagreements between them?

The Family Tree is an intriguing story, and the introduction of a worthy new writing talent.

- Gail Cooke

Carole Cadwalladr's first novel is a must-read for anyone who grew up in the seventies - her musings on American and English popular culture are worth reading the book for alone. That's just the icing on the cake, however. This book is a fascinating study of a middle-class family - trying to stay normal with a decidedly not normal mom who we later learn is mentally ill. She is written so sympathetically that even when she does inexcusable things you can't help but feel her desperation and pain.

All in all, a wonderful first novel, and an excellent read.

I loved this book for so many different reasons. The characters jump off the page and stay with you long after you have finished reading the book. The plot circles around this family with compelling stories, surprising twists, and a subtle sense of humor. As a non-scientist, I even enjoyed the way Cadwalladr added explanations of theories of genetics!

Caldwalladr's characters are brimming with life and one is quickly drawn to them. It's easy to care about them immensely. The book is well organized and easy to follow,unless,like aging Alicia, one is prone to Alzheimer's disease. Each chapter (Part) is defined by a word and its definition and following genetic, bioloical or other concepts, that may be difficult to understand, are usually cleared up through clever, insightful, practical and sometimes philosopical dialog amongst the protagonists, especially Alistair. Diagrams also help, however, the real insight falls to Rebecca. Unlike Julian Barnes, ("Talking It Over" and "Love, etc." Cadwalladr doesn't send one running back and forth to the dictionary. The language is witty and eloquent. A brilliant first novel as delightful as anything written by Julian Fellows or Nancy Mitford.

Cadwalladr shoots her satirical barbs in so many directions that it's hard to keep up. One of her targets is her own book. "it sounds like one of those novels. You know. Three generations of women blah, blah, blah. Triumph over adversity. After many trials it all turns out ok in the end." That does basically summarise the plot. The heroine Rebecca Monroe is a cultural historian married to a nasty evolutionary psychologist and worried about the genetics of bipolar disorder in her family. (It's interesting to me that manic-depressive illness, which has become such a modish literary plot device, dates back to Emil Kraepelin, and that the genetic studies that so much concern Rebecca Monroe are based on old-fashioned study of family trees rather than any fancy molecular biology, and owe more to Gregor Mendel than Crick and Watson)
There are jabs, sometimes savage and bitter, at every fashion in British life in the forties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties and the twenty-first centuary. I think you'd have to know a lot about the things and times she skewers to properly appreciate it. Some of the merriment is derived from poking fun at what those benighted Britons in those distant decades thought was new and fashionable, which is not quite fair. It will be our turn next.

The famous opening line of ANNA KARENINA, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," comes to mind after reading Cadwalladr's novel. Rebecca Monroe comes from a very typical British family ... at least on the outside. Like all families, the Monroes have a their own very unique skeletons and crises. More than a typical novel about "three generations of women, blah, blah, blah," THE FAMILY TREE intersperses discussion of nature vs. nuture (in the voice of Rebecca's husband, a geneticist) and popular culture (in the form of fascinating footnotes provided by Rebecca who is working on her Ph.D. in this topic). This book is very funny, slightly sad, and completely original.

I found myself staying up to read this, as I kept hoping for a big interesting plot twist. Unfortunately I found it to be very predictable. Still, it's not a bad book, but was just ok for me.