The Misfortunes of Family

January 1, 2020
The Brights are a Kennedyesque family whose patriarch just retired from the Senate. Gathering at their Berkshires lake house for their annual summer vacation, all the family and their extras look forward to an enjoyable summer. Farah Dhaliwal is there as well. She is a documentarian, looking for her big break with this real life look at the lives of politicians. Even though John Bright, Sr. has retired, everyone is expecting him to announce his second act. As Farah settles in, she, and the readers, get to know the family. Each of the Bright boys, having grown up with their father's weighty expectations of them, are at a career crossroads. Their idyllic, yet emotionally fraught, summer is interrupted by an overseas terrorist attack, and by John Sr.'s announcement that he is running for governor, which unearths long-buried family secrets. At first, it is hard to care about the Brights' first-world problems. Slowly, as the family unravels and pulls back together, Reilly's family creation is all too real and, ultimately, sympathetic. Recommended for all fiction collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)