A Friend of the Family

• A Washington Post Book of the Year
• A New York Times Editor’s Pick
• An Amazon.com Best Book of the Month (November 2009)
• A January Magazine Top Ten Book of 2009
• A Bookpage.com Top Ten Book of 2009
• A Modern Tonic Best Book of 2009

PAPERBACK EDITION AVAILABLE NOW
buy it > indiebound / powell’s / barnes & noble / amazon

A skilled internist with a thriving practice in suburban New Jersey, Pete Dizinoff has a devoted wife, an impressive house, and a son, Alec, on whom he’s pinned all his hopes. But he never counted on the wild card: Laura, his best friend’s daughter—ten years older than Alec, irresistibly beautiful, with a past so shocking that it’s never spoken of…

Reviews for A Friend of the Family

“. . . such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals . . . Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant, A Friend of the Family will leave you shaken and chastened–and grateful for the warning.”
–Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Stunning . . . An unqualified success . . . Grodstein’s sentences are finely made and precisely fitted to one another and her story . . . If there’s any justice in the world, A Friend of the Family will be her breakout book . . . She has written a novel that will leave her reader sitting up, sifting the evidence in the dead of night.”
–David Thoreen, The Boston Globe

“A novel about middle-aged male suburban angst–written by a young woman?! . . . This moving tale of a New Jersey doctor who goes, well, crazy in an effort to protect his son…is the kind of quiet domestic novel we don’t see much of these days.”
–Sara Nelson, The Daily Beast, “The Big Books of Fall”

“Grodstein, with one previous novel to her credit, has succeeded in shattering the image of suburban happiness. Her perceptive portrayals demonstrate the thinness of the veneer that separates bliss from gloom . . . [The story] is told with great understanding and sensitivity, gripping readers so that they will find the book hard to put down.”
–The Chicago Tribune

“. . . a persuasive indictment of a certain kind of privileged narrow-mindedness . . . in the best tradition of parenting gone catastrophically awry . . .”
–Jim Shepard, O: The Oprah Magazine

“Grodstein’s superb storytelling entices us to keep plunging deeper despite dread of an ominous undertow . . .”
–Providence Journal

A “wonderful second novel . . . Grodstein brings great insight into a father’s protective urge for his son in this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review

“If college applications, crickets singing in cul-de-sacs, and long drives down elm-lined roads are the details of your life, this book will startle you with its familiarity.”
–Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Grodstein’s harsh, honest prose makes this haunting tale worthwhile.”
–People

“. . . beautifully captures the ever striving angst of parents who will take any step to ensure their children’s lives are easier or better.”
–USA Today

“This taut drama explores how well we really know those closest to us.”
–Redbook

“A gripping prose style and an impressive insight into paternal love are at the heart of this book’s appeal.”
–Booklist

“The spectacular new novel by Lauren Grodstein is a play of intricacies. It’s a book about the details, and each of them rings as clearly as notes in a song . . . Brilliant.”
–Tony Buchsbaum, January Magazine

“Compulsively readable . . . Grodstein plots the story expertly, taking it in directions we don’t expect.”
–Robert Weibezahl, Bookpage

“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

“The moving, complex, beautifully written story of a good man who’s slowly losing his grip on his life and his family . . . unfolds with unerring precision.”
–Kate Christensen, author of Trouble

“A wise and enormously compelling novel, expansive in its vision, fearless in its probing of the heart’s gray areas.”
–Irina Reyn, author of What Happened to Anna K.

“While ‘Jewish family saga’ and ‘page-turner’ aren’t exactly descriptors one might expect to find in the same sentence, Grodstein manages to deliver on both fronts, with room to spare…”
–T Cooper, author of The Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes