Douglas Kennedy — The Great Wide Open

Hutchinson 2019 Paperback, 584pp. It is 1980s New York. Heady, excessive times. Alice Burns, a young book editor, is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations resonates, perhaps because she has just watched her own family implode. As she reads she wonders: when did the sadness start? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice? Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school bullying, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970's Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the U. S. embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan. But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers; how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others. Heavy. (ISBN: 9780091953737). Good.