Fic­tion

Fam­i­ly and Oth­er Catastrophes

  • From the Publisher
March 29, 2018

A delight­ful­ly quirky debut about fam­i­ly bonds and the chaos that ensues when nature and lack of nur­ture collide.

Emi­ly Glass knows she’s neu­rot­ic. But she’s got it under con­trol. Sort of. She dons com­pres­sion socks when she flies (because, you know, deep vein throm­bo­sis) and responds to peo­ple rou­tine­ly over­es­ti­mat­ing her age with more Life­spin class­es and less gluten. Thank­ful­ly, she also has David, the won­der­ful man she’ll soon call hus­band, assum­ing they can sur­vive wed­ding week with her wild­ly dys­func­tion­al family.

Emi­ly’s ther­a­pist moth­er, Mar­la, who’s been diag­nos­ing her chil­dren since they were in dia­pers, sees their home­com­ing as the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for long-over­due fam­i­ly ther­a­py ses­sions. Less enthused are Emi­ly and her two sib­lings: ardent­ly fem­i­nist old­er sis­ter Lau­ren, who does­n’t think the wed­ding par­ty should have defined gen­der roles, and recent­ly divorced broth­er Jason, whose overzeal­ous return to sin­gle­hood is only tem­pered by his puz­zling friend­ship with David’s Renais­sance Faire-enthu­si­ast brother.

As the week comes to a tumul­tuous head, Emi­ly wants noth­ing more than to get mar­ried and get as far away from her crazy rel­a­tives as pos­si­ble. But that’s eas­i­er said than done when Mar­la’s med­dling breathes new life into old secrets. After all, the ties that bind fam­i­ly togeth­er may bend, but they aren’t so eas­i­ly broken.

Laugh-out-loud fun­ny and endear­ing­ly raw, Fam­i­ly and Oth­er Cat­a­stro­phes is as enter­tain­ing as your favorite sit­com and intro­duces Alexan­dra Borowitz as an out­stand­ing new voice in humor­ous fiction.

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