A Friend of the Family
  • Published: 15 February 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099533351
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $19.99

A Friend of the Family

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A riveting and powerful story of suburban corruption and tragedy.

Sometimes the wrong decisions can be made for the right reasons ...

Peter and Elaine Dizinoff have been friends with Joe and Iris Stern since medical school. Living the perfect life in a wealthy New Jersey neighbourhood, their children have grown up together and their lives are irrevocably intertwined. Until the Sterns are faced with a nightmare they could never have imagined - one that shatters the suburban idyll and forces both families to question everything they have ever believed in.

In time, the fragments of their fractured existence knit together once more, but the echo of their heartbreak still lies below the surface. And just when the Sterns have a chance to come to terms with their tragedy, Peter makes a fatal error of judgement that sends shock waves through all their lives, testing their friendship to the very limits and threatening to destroy it for ever ...
  • Published: 15 February 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099533351
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $19.99
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About the author

Lauren Grodstein

Lauren Grodstein is the author of a collection of short stories The Best of Animals (Persea, 2002) and a novel Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, which was both a Breakout Book selection from Amazon.com and a Border's New Voices pick in the US. Her work has been translated into German, Italian and French. She attended Columbia University and received her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia's School of the Arts. Lauren currently teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and young son.

Also by Lauren Grodstein

The Flaw Of Love
See all

Praise for A Friend of the Family

A gripping account of paternal love gone wildly astray

Helen Schulman, author of A DAY AT THE BEACH

This book is full of inisights and honesty ... These people will stay in your head and keep their hands on your heart. Grodstein's skills at storytelling are unwavering.

Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning author of OLIVE KITTERIDGE

There's nothing polemic or didactic about Grodstein's story, but she's written such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals ... What Grodstein captures so strikingly is the anxiety of a father's love ... Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant

Washington Post

In her wonderful second novel, Grodstein traces a suburban crisis and gives especially perceptive attention to the father-son bond... An astute dissector of male aspiration, Grodstein brings great insight into a father's protective urge for his son in this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis.

Publisher’s Weekly *Starred Review*

Compelling and quick to unfold. Readers will find themselves racing for the finish.

News of the World

A gripping plot, a moral dilemma and unexpected tenderness makes it a winner.

Image

Beautifully told

Evening Standard

I'd thoroughly recommend it.

Candis

A gripping account of angst-ridden fatherly love and a suburban idyll blown apart

Chat magazine
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