The Family Tree
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'A rare treat, delivered with aplomb' Sunday Telegraph
On the day of Charles and Diana's wedding, Rebecca Monroe's mother locked herself in the bathroom and never came out. Was it because her squidgy chocolate log collapsed or because Rebecca's grandmother married her first cousin? Can we never know why we do what we do?
'This clever and moving debut examines three generations of the Monroe family and explores nature versus nurture...thoughtful and immensely entertaining' Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The ease with which British journalist Cadwalladr spins three generational tales in her debut is outdone only by the grace and wit with which she delivers each one. Set in late 20th-century Britain, the novel is narrated by Rebecca Monroe, a pop culture researcher who tells of her marriage to Alistair, a behavioral geneticist; her childhood leading up to her mother's suicide; and her grandmother's doomed biracial romance with Cecil, a Jamaican immigrant. In an effort to better understand herself, the child she can't decide whether or not to have, and the people she still can't believe make up her family, Rebecca considers both sides of the nature/nurture debate, with any romantic notions she might be on the brink of reaching debunked by her husband's passionless scientific postulations. Cadwalladr explicates her tale with a slew of definitions, scientific charts and graphs, detailed family anatomies, examples of deductive fallacies and footnotes expounding on such essential '70s pop culture references as Dallas and The Sale of the Century. Her mastery of time and place, wry humor and sporadic bouts of self-doubt will endear her to readers, while her fascination with the choices people make combined with a morbid curiosity about her own fate add depth and texture to this utterly winning tale of one lovable, dysfunctional family.