Monkeys by Susan Minot

Balancing the all-seeing perspective yet limited understanding of youth, this novel (in the form of short stories) show us a New England family through the eyes of its seven children.

Each story moves us forward in time, eventually covering about 15 years. The stories mostly center around small, relatively commonplace occurrences - monumental life events happen outside the stories, though we see their impact through the changing interactions of the family.

It's a story from the perspective of the kids, without it being a children's book. With such a range in age, it's interesting to ponder the ways each Vincent child processes events like mother's tears, father's alcohol abuse, or the addition of another baby.

Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan

Telling the story of one family and two generations of siblings, this novel flips back and forth in time between the 1950s when two sisters immigrate from Ireland and the modern-day as the family deals with the sudden death of an oldest son.

It's a story full of secrets and the way secrets rarely stay hidden. As a naive girl in Ireland, Nora makes a hasty decision (to marry the neighbor boy) that sets in motion everything that comes after. But as often happens, she's daily reminded of those decisions and sometimes feels like a martyr for the sacrifices she's made.

In the next generation, the kids are a tight bunch but are holding their own secrets. Coming together in the wake of Patrick's death brings them closer and also offers an opportunity for change.

The book is engaging and very well done. While satisfying, the ending is left open and unfinished, with the rest of the story for you to imagine. I highly recommend it!

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

A quartet of adult siblings about to come into a substantial inheritance get a big surprise when their mother decides instead to drain the fund in a bail-out of the eldest. What they're each hiding is that all could use a bail-out.

It's another family book - another look at sibling relationships and the roles we take over and over within the family framework. Another book where they're all a bit contemptible, yet realistically so. I wonder if we would like ANYONE if we knew their secrets?

We read this for book discussion at the library, but I missed the discussion. It could be a good one, too: How does the mere idea of money spoil each character? Does the grief motivating Tommy's bad decision make it more honorable than any of the Plum siblings bad decisions?

I enjoyed the book immensely - although the end is a bit pat for me. I felt like most of the ends tie up a bit too neatly. I listened to the audiobook, read by Mia Barron, and it was very well done.

The Other F-Word by Natasha Friend

When a severely allergic teenager decides to track down his sperm donor in order to do genetic testing, he ends up with more than he bargained for: a passel of half-siblings, too.

I loved this book - it does a stellar job dealing with all the conflicted feelings about "genetic source material" since there are so many diverse families involved: the book includes lesbian parents, heterosexual parents, mothers who gave birth and mothers who did not, kids with siblings, singletons, and even twins who disagree about this life-altering decision. There's a best friend who's adopted, which allows a conversation about the decision to donate sperm versus giving away a baby. The kids are teens - so they're a bit more adult in perspective and yet still very involved in family units. They're in turn curious, scared, anxious, and unexpectedly delighted to find someone with whom they share DNA.

And in spite of all these emotions and potentially heavy subject matter, it's a quaint book that's funny and utterly captivating. I'm not giving too much away to reveal the story's also about teen crushes, bullying, troublemaking/underachieving, and childish grudges. Highly recommended.

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

A year ago Gottie was having sex with Jason, but it was a secret. A year ago her beloved grandfather was still alive and planning a big solstice celebration. But right now, time keeps slipping down a wormhole that spits Gottie out last summer, then rips her back to the present.

Gottie's a science and math genius, so the wormhole dilemma is a challenge she's attempting to rationalize. Is it possible? How? The part she's maybe overlooking is the Why? Additionally, her obsession with last summer means she's not really living her fullest life right now - there's a lot she's missing.

It's a story of shifting perspectives, with new information leaked out in drips and drabs. There's a delightful cast of characters in a loose, free-form hippy kind of household with minimal guidance and too many teenagers. I was captivated by the narrative - I couldn't decide if this was a story of magic realism, or science fiction, or some kind of psychological breakdown.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

When their mother takes sick, three adult sisters return to the roost. But each has ulterior motives for her stay - pregnancy, thievery, insecurity - which make their challenging familial relationships even more fraught.

I enjoyed the story - it's about self-discovery and how we limit and define ourselves based on our family - but it's pretty much contemporary chick-lit for the literate.

The "weird sisters" of the title refers to Macbeth's witches, rather than any real oddity in the novel's main trio. That said, you'd best be familiar with Shakespeare's life works to be comfortable in this novel - it's overflowing with people named after characters and conversations filled with quotes. Additionally, the story contains layer upon layer of references and analogies to the bard's work.

Also of note: the story is told from a very unusual point of view. The omniscient narrator speaks singularly as all three sisters collectively (first-person plural). Everything is "we" even when talking about one sister's secrets that she's keeping from the others. It's workable, but a little awkward sometimes.

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

A week of sitting shiva for his deceased, lapsed-Jew father isn't what Judd Foxman wants to do right now. It's going to get ugly if the four grown Foxman siblings have to all live under the same roof for a full week. But there isn't really any choice.

Not that Judd's really got anything better to do - he's separated from his wife after he found her in bed with his boss. Oh, and for that same reason, he's now jobless and living in a basement apartment.

So maybe a week in his mom's basement might not be that bad.

The book's funny, and the sibling love-hate relationships are very realistic. They're each comfortable in their consigned sibling roles, and yet also dying to be something else altogether.

PS: I've seen the 2014 movie version of this (same title, starring Jason Bateman as Judd) and it stayed pretty close to the book, with a few notable exceptions and the usual simplification of the storylines. It should probably tell you something that I sought out the book after enjoying the movie. Additionally, I laughed out loud when Judd in the book remembers his Mom working out in the 80's and trying to get a butt like Jane Fonda's - because in the film Jane Fonda plays the mom.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

When teenaged daughter Lydia dies, the hairline fractures in the Lee family shatter into insurmountable caverns between them. How did this happen? How many secrets do they each carry, anyway?

American-born Chinese James wants popularity and "common" experiences for his family, not the unique apartness he always felt. Marilyn wants her daughter to do everything she didn't. Nathan wants to reinvent himself at college, away from his family. Lydia wants to be free of the crushing expectations of her parents. And Hannah just wants to be noticed.

All this want, and no one's any good at expressing it. But that's true of many families, isn't it?

A strong theme in the book is the burden of expectations: what parents expect for and of their children, how children believe they should act to make parents happy, what we expect of others based on our preconceived notions. Ultimately it's that weight that wrecks them all.

I loved this book! While the book takes place in the 1970s, it's still a modern story with current themes and problems. You feel for each of the characters and the boxes they're trapped in; how can they burst free to really live? It's a familiar challenge.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Cooke family was irretrievably broken by something that happened years ago. And while Rosemary would like to tell you about what happened when she was five years old, she's going to have to come at it in her own way - from the middle out, and perhaps with the beginning at the end.

The story begins in the middle with Rosemary in college, the only child left in her family and anonymous at a school far from her hometown. She's proud that no one here knows about her sister or her brother, and she's decided to purposefully not speak about her family. See, the Cookes were a close-knit family until Fern left: but the FBI is hunting older brother Lowell as a domestic terrorist, dad drinks too much, and their mother's psyche is full of fissures. What happened to Fern?

Rosemary's memory is spotty (she was just a child), and we'll learn the story as she remembers it, one bit, one crisis, and one discomfort at a time.

I loved this book, and sometimes forgot it's fiction - it reads like the kind of pain-filled autobiography that is popular to press.

By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain by Joe Hill

Neighborhood kids wandering the foggy morning beach make a startling discovery - the beach boulder they've climbed in fun turns out to be their lake's fabled sea monster, dead and washed up on the sand.

This short story has been published as a stand-alone ebook. Since I'm a sucker for anything Joe Hill writes, you know I'm in. At just 20 pages, it's a masterful piece of childhood innocence that grips you, then nails you, and left me stunned. Did I mention just 20 pages of actual story? :)

See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles

Twelve-year-old Fern has a crazy, big family: she's the third of four kids, and feels invisible. Her older brother may be gay but hasn't admitted it yet, her younger baby brother's just a spoiled pain, and her sister (the oldest) is angry with the world and working at the family's restaurant during a gap-year before college. Dad is always coming up with embarrassing, loony promotional ideas for the restaurant, and as a result, Mom's continually striving to tune out the chaos in favor of inner peace.

But in a mere moment, everything changes. Life will never be the same.

This is an excellent book, and also gut wrenching. Emotionally draining. I listened to the audiobook on a car trip and considered quitting because it was putting such a pall over my drive. But I also so badly wanted to know what happened that I persevered.

It's not too heavy a story for kids - every day, real-life kids deal with these same issues and more, and I'm glad books like this (and many others, too) illustrate they are not alone. It's exceptionally written, and worth reading. But it's also not a light novel, and I think it would be best accompanied by a discussion with a kid who reads it, to help iron out their emotions and thoughts about the events of the tale. I know I spent some quiet time, contemplating, at its completion.