At the beginning of Steven Rowley’s third novel, The Guncle, Patrick O’Hara’s life is a little too quiet. Only a few years ago, he was a sitcom star with his own catchphrase who was recognized wherever he went. Now he has exiled himself to Palm Springs, California, seeing no one.

But then Patrick’s sister-in-law, Sara, dies after being ill for three years. Sara was Patrick’s best friend in college before she married his brother, Greg. At the funeral, Greg reveals his addiction to painkillers and asks if Patrick will take his kids for the summer while Greg goes to rehab. Patrick resists, finding the notion preposterous, but after a surprising moment of connection, he and his niece and nephew agree on the visit.

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Patrick’s not quite equipped to parent the bereft 9-year-old Maisie and 6-year-old Grant, who in turn are mystified by their GUP’s life. (GUP: Gay Uncle Patrick, soon amended to “Guncle.”) Rowley spins Grant’s first terrified encounter with Patrick’s fancy Japanese toilet into a lovely, funny scene, and such comic misunderstandings pepper the novel. Maisie and Grant take Patrick’s snark, zingers and pop culture-laden wit literally, repeatedly reminding their uncle that they don’t understand what he’s talking about.

Patrick tries to bring color and light into his niece’s and nephew’s lives, aiming to serve as an exuberant Auntie Mame, but he’s grieving, too. When he begins to share his memories of Sara and to ponder his midlife self-exile, he connects more deeply with Maisie and Grant, which allows him to consider returning to his old life and to rethink his own sibling relationships.

The Guncle does wonderful work with its youngest characters. Patrick’s exchanges with Grant and Maisie are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, even as they reveal two kids at different stages of development and grief. The novel's light touch extends to its secondary characters, including Patrick's neighbors and old friends.

Never going too dark, The Guncle is a sweet family story that offers an unexpected yet inevitable ending. 

What happens to our secrets after death? What do we do when we discover things we never imagined—about ourselves, our families or the stories we tell to make sense of the world? These questions drive Claire Fuller’s engaging Unsettled Ground. 

As the novel opens, 51-year-old twins Jeanie and Julius are at a loss when their mother, Dot, dies unexpectedly. The twins lived in a cottage with Dot; Jeanie, who has a heart condition and never learned to read or write, tends the garden, while Julius brings in a small income by way of odd jobs in town. Their home is their sanctuary until Dot’s death, when the careful life she controlled and constructed for her family begins to crack. Questions arise about past and present relationships, land and money.

The reader travels with Jeanie and Julius as they begin to grapple with the complexities of adulthood and the truth about their mother. This exploration builds a sense of mystery at a slow and steady pace. There comes a moment when the reader must know what happened, and they won’t be able to stop reading until they discover how it all resolves.

Even the title opens up questions, about what it means to settle or to remain unsettled, and about the nature of home and how one is made. The story exists on ground that has been disturbed by secrets and money, by the need for both independence and connection—and that ground continues to shift underfoot as the novel progresses.

Readers will root for Jeanie and Julius to survive and, even more than that, to live.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Claire Fuller is one of our 2021 Writers to Watch: Women on the rise. See the full list here.

A little over halfway through Swimming Back to Trout River, readers encounter a chapter titled “The Improviser’s Guide to Untranslatable Words” in which they are introduced to several Chinese metaphysical terms. The first, yuanfen, is a subtler counterpart to the concept of fate. Rather than certain actions or outcomes being predestined and set in stone, yuanfen more loosely and fluidly binds people and events together in a meaningful coincidence, perhaps only for a fleeting period of time.

The second term, zaohua, refers to an inherent force of progress that flows through the world, cycling through creation, destruction and rebirth. And the third is ciji, which refers to a catalyst or event, most commonly a psychological trauma. Grasping the nuances of these three concepts is the key to unlocking a richer reading experience and deeper understanding of Linda Rui Feng’s ambitious and impressive first novel.

Set against the background of the Cultural Revolution, Swimming Back to Trout River tells the story of a family separated by more than physical distance. We follow the lives of Momo and Cassia, an estranged married couple that has immigrated to the United States, leaving their daughter, Junie, with her grandparents in rural China until they are able to collect her. As Feng explores the present-day distance that has grown between Momo, Cassia and Junie, she poignantly traces how the passions and personal sorrows from each of their pasts have shaped and influenced their current situations.

Sensitively exploring themes of grief, hope and resilience, Swimming Back to Trout River is a symphony of a novel that is operatic in scope and elevated by Feng’s artful writing. The author’s experience as a professor of Chinese cultural history is an additional asset, as she illustrates and celebrates Chinese sensibilities within the framework of a multilayered, deeply human story that transcends borders.

The challenges of balancing money and personal happiness wend their way through National Book Critics Circle Award winner Joan Silber’s Secrets of Happiness, which begins with a startling act of duplicity and ends with acceptance and reconciliation despite the characters’ changed circumstances.

The novel opens as Ethan, a gay lawyer in Manhattan, relates how his family was blown apart when his father, Gil, was named in a paternity suit by Nok, a woman he brought to New York from Thailand and with whom he had two sons. Gil’s wife, Abby, divorced him and journeyed to Bangkok to teach English, seeking serenity in the unfamiliar surroundings of Thailand, and Gil moved in with Nok after he had a debilitating stroke.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s new half brother, Joe, also travels to Thailand, hoping to bribe police to release his wastrel brother from prison. After Joe’s return to New York, he falls back into an awkward relationship with a high school girlfriend who was abruptly widowed and then swindled out of inheriting her husband’s estate by his greedy family.

The complex seesaw of love and finances, both offered and withheld, is explored throughout seven chapters and across four continents. Silber’s device—a secondary character from one chapter commanding the narrative in the next—is as effortless as a dragonfly skimming over a pond. The multiple perspectives bring an unexpected cohesion to the novel’s diverse cast, which includes Ethan’s boyfriend, who lives with his terminally ill former partner, and Gil’s old girlfriend, a free spirit who raises two daughters in Kathmandu, Nepal.

As more connections reveal themselves, the slim threads that bind these characters take on emotional weight, exposing the ways Gil’s infidelity has trickled out into the world. But Secrets of Happiness also explores the great generosity of love that exists in families, whether we’re born into them or choose them. Rarely is a novel of moral ideas so buoyant in spirit or so exquisitely crafted.

J.R. Ewing, the man everyone loves to hate in the classic TV series “Dallas,” may have finally met his match. When it comes to lying, cheating and scandals, the Briscoe family in Stacey Swann’s jaw-dropping debut, Olympus, Texas, gives him a run for his money.

Each character in the expansive clan has his or her own secrets, extramarital pursuits and jealous rages, making it hard to keep everything straight without a set of cue cards. To sum up the worst offenders: March Briscoe suffered a two-year exile from the town of Olympus after an affair with his brother Hap’s wife; Peter Briscoe, the family patriarch, fathered three children outside his marriage, including twins Artie and Arlo; June Briscoe, Peter’s wife and mother to Hap and March, is enamored by local veterinarian Cole; and Artie is attracted to Arlo’s former bandmate Ryan, whom she accidentally shoots while on a hunting trip.

And that’s just for starters. March’s return home to Olympus sets off a chain of events as tragic as any caused by the mythological gods. Right out of the gate, March is involved in a knockdown brawl with Hap, picking up where their feud left off two years ago.

No one here is innocent, likable or without secrets worth savoring, making Swann’s book all the more enticing. Cole best sums up the family’s scandalous ways when he asks June, “When’s the last time you did something without thinking?” The answer, it seems, is that none of them is guilty of overthinking anything—or thinking at all, for that matter.

As the novel races from one indiscretion to another at lightning speed, fans of mythology will enjoy spotting the tragic parallels between Swann’s characters and the Greek and Roman gods. (March is clearly Mars, for example.) Swann’s prose is deeply descriptive and her characters heartfelt, but it all boils down to whether anyone in this family can get past their selfish feelings, unrestrained passions and bottled-up anger long enough to forgive each other.

Eleanor Morse’s precise, patient prose captivates from page one of her fourth novel, Margreete’s Harbor, as she describes an early winter morning for an elderly woman named Margreete. At home on the Maine coast, Margreete heats up some bacon drippings and retrieves her slippers, but while she’s sidelined by a dead mouse that the cat brought in, poof—her stove catches fire. That fire leads to big changes, as Margreete’s daughter, Liddie, and her family must move from Michigan to look after Margreete in Burnt Harbor, Maine. 

Beginning in 1955 and continuing through 1968, this is a bighearted, multigenerational saga with a simmering social conscience, as Margreete; Liddie; her husband, Harry; and each of their three children wrestle with their secrets and desires. Morse chronicles big and small moments equally well, the sum of which can make—and sometimes break—a family. 

Burnt Harbor is “the tiniest eyelash compared to the great eye of the ocean beyond,” and Morse expertly plays with this perspective, showing how global events seep into every molecule of the family’s life. For example, with dogged determination, teenager Bernie tries to head to Washington, D.C., to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, partly motivated by his realization that he loves his best friend, a Black boy named Noah. A few years later, Harry chains himself to a White House fence to protest the Vietnam War—at a moment when Liddie desperately needs her husband by her side.

Margreete’s Harbor is also a particularly tender portrait of a family faced with dementia. All three grandchildren safely confide their greatest secrets to their grandmother, sure that she won’t remember their confessions. But Margreete still has wisdom to share, and when Bernie is just a boy, she advises, “When you grow up, don’t ever try to love someone you don’t love. And don’t ever try to not love someone you do love.” 

Of course, things aren’t always rosy. By moving to Maine, Liddie must leave behind her spot as first cellist with the Ann Arbor Symphony. One of the grandchildren must stop Margreete from jumping out a bedroom window, and Harry has a secret rendezvous with a nurse he encounters in the emergency room. As Morse writes, “Unless you live in a cave by yourself and speak only to the chickadee, life is messy, because humans are messy.”

Full of love, triumph and a boatload of heartbreak, Margreete’s Harbor is a celebration of life’s inevitable messiness. As after any good visit with family or dear friends, you will leave feeling satisfied while yearning for more.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's 2016 debut novel, The Nest, was an instant bestseller for a reason. It had the lure of cash; a charismatic, lovable rogue as a central figure; and a crackling cast of New York City characters. In her second novel, Good Company, Sweeney once again flexes her talent for crafting loving family dynamics that splinter due to errant behavior.

Flora Mancini’s seemingly idyllic life in Los Angeles as a voice-over actor and wife to Julian, a full-time TV actor, hits the rocks when she discovers an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring, supposedly lost years earlier. From this pivotal moment, chapters begin to alternate between present and the past, revealing the reason for the ring’s disappearance when the couple was living in New York City with their young daughter, Ruby, and struggling to keep Julian’s theater company, Good Company, from sinking.

When the lure of steady work spurs the Mancinis to switch coasts, upgrading their climate and lifestyle, they are able to reunite with Flora’s best friend, Margot, another Good Company alum. Margot’s husband, David, was forced to give up his East Coast job as a heart surgeon after he had a stroke, and Margot was lucky to land a recurring role on a daytime soap opera. Now she’s living the celebrity life.

Along the way, there have been bumps in the road for the four friends, but life on the West Coast is treating the former Manhattanites well. Flora’s discovery, however, shatters the illusion of her perfect marriage and her rock-solid friendship with Margot.

As in The Nest, Sweeney skillfully navigates the narrow path between literary and commercial fiction with plenty of wit, warmth, heartache and joy. Like a comfy armchair, this is a novel you can sink into and enjoy. Good company, indeed.

It can take very little to upend a life and send it on an entirely new trajectory. As David Bowie rather cryptically said during a 1999 interview for Uncut, “A spoon might affect my performance.” Maybe he was suggesting that the size and shape of a coffee spoon, and whether it was metal or plastic, would affect how he enjoyed his coffee, which in turn would affect how the interview went. The Bruce family would certainly understand what he’s getting at, as an old, dented soupspoon is the MacGuffin in Pamela Terry’s debut novel, The Sweet Taste of Muscadines.

The spoon is found in the hand of Geneva Bruce as she lies dead in the family’s muscadine arbor one hot summer morning in Georgia. Nobody, including her three grown children, knows what she was doing with it, but they find out soon enough. To say that the little spoon affects the performance of this genteel Southern family is an understatement. 

The Bruce children are narrator Lila; her jovial brother, Henry; and sister Abby, who was Geneva’s favorite. Abby is most upset by their mother’s death, and she shows up drunk to the memorial, wearing a fuchsia suit and teetering on stiletto heels, her hair dyed screaming red. She manages to curse out her second-grade teacher before Henry hustles her from the scene. In moments like this, the book feels like a mashup of Fried Green Tomatoes and You Can’t Go Home Again with a sprinkling of William Faulkner.

Abby is in such bad shape that Lila and Henry decide to answer the lingering questions about their mother—indeed, their parents—without her. The trail leads them first to the Carolina low country, then to the beautiful but rugged highlands of Scotland. One of the many pleasures of the book is Terry’s descriptions of details like the lushness of gardenias and crepe myrtles, and the way steam rises from a Georgia blacktop after a hard summer rain. When the story moves to Scotland, she’s just as skilled at describing fierce sea storms, the welcome coziness of a bed-and-breakfast and the colors and textures of tweeds and tartans.

But Terry’s real focus is forgiveness, radical acceptance or even what some might call grace. A reader might wonder if they could ever be as forgiving as the Bruce children are of their parents’ transgressions. The Sweet Taste of Muscadines encourages readers to believe that they could.

Hala Alyan’s second novel, The Arsonists’ City, follows the members of the Nasr family as they debate the sale of the family home in Lebanon. Like the Yacoub family in Alyan’s debut novel, Salt Houses, the Nasrs are spread all over the globe, but when Idris, the family patriarch, decides to sell the ancestral home in Beirut after his own father’s death, his wife and children unite in their shared desire to stop him.

Though the house in Beirut has been a constant touchstone, the Nasrs’ lives are marked by the effects of political upheaval, migration and globalization. In 1978, Mazna met Idris through mutual friends while she was training to be an actor in her hometown of Damascus, and she began secretly visiting him in Beirut, though her romantic interest was initially sparked by Idris’ best friend. After the city was torn apart by civil war, Idris and Mazna married and immigrated to suburban Los Angeles, where Idris worked as a cardiologist. Mazna abandoned her dreams of being an actor, raised their three children and took a job in a small garden center. 

Now their oldest daughter, Ava, lives in Brooklyn, and their middle son, Mimi, manages a restaurant in Austin, Texas, though most of his passion is thrown into a middling rock band. Mimi’s lack of fulfillment puts him at odds with his younger sister, Naj, whose music career took off internationally and who chose Beirut as her home, in part to keep her sex life far from the judgmental eyes of her parents.

Idris’ decision to sell the house brings the parents and adult children, with and without their life partners, to Beirut, where the safe distance that cushioned their complicated relationships is eliminated. Old passions, betrayals and bitter jealousies quickly arise.

Alyan, who is a family therapist as well as a poet and novelist, has a gift for depicting the knotty, messy but ultimately resilient bonds of family love. Though The Arsonists’ City lays bare how civil war and brutal violence impact a single family, it is the everyday, sometimes petty squabbles between husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child that make this novel both memorable and relatable.

“If there’s something I’ve learned in this country, it’s that your address decides everything.” That piece of advice is tucked among the rich character descriptions in the opening chapter of Naima Coster’s second novel, What’s Mine and Yours. What could be taken as a passing remark is actually a poignant thesis for the story that follows as it unfolds from the 1990s to the present.

In early 2000s North Carolina, Jade is thrilled that her son, Gee, and other students from their part of town will have the opportunity to transfer to the predominately white Central High School. The newspaper reports that the merging of the city and county school systems is popular among the town’s residents, and pilot programs provide incentives for students to transfer across the system. But at the crowded town hall meeting before the start of the school year, Gee doesn’t share his mom’s enthusiasm. He’s sure this isn’t a welcoming committee; he’s heard white parents plan to protest.

Lacey May is among those pushing back. She hasn’t had it easy; after her husband went to jail, she chose to couple up with a man who could provide for her and her three daughters. Lacey May’s oldest, Noelle, is embarrassed by her mother’s actions and is sure they’re motivated by the color of her new classmates’ skin. Noelle and her sisters are half-Latina, though they pass for white. She concocts a plan with Central’s theater teacher: They’ll put on a Shakespearean performance to build a bridge between existing students and newcomers. The play brings Noelle and Gee together, even as their mothers continue to rage outside the classroom.

In vividly detailed scenes spanning more than 25 years, Coster (author of Halsey Street and one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2020) illuminates the impact of Noelle’s and Gee’s families and formative years. The pair is the heart of What’s Mine and Yours, but Coster allows every major player their time in the spotlight. Her rich character development illustrates the many ways family and circumstances can influence who we become.

Bennett Driscoll has what you might call a “Take It Easy” problem. You remember that 1972 song from the Eagles: “I’ve got seven women on my mind / Four that want to own me / Two that want to stone me / One says she’s a friend of mine . . .”

In Super Host, the first novel from Kate Russo (daughter of Richard Russo), Bennett has been taking it a little bit too easy. Once a painter of note, he has slid mindlessly into an indeterminate middle age, where he has been abandoned, in rather quick fashion, by critical notoriety, wealth, his gallery, his wife and any real sense of purpose. While he ponders how to extricate himself from several of those situations, the wealth bit demands his immediate attention, so he converts his estate into a short-term rental while he occupies the detached building that serves as a studio and occasional living quarters.

At this point, the only notable achievement left to Bennett is his status as a Super Host, which he jealously guards, even as it brings him into contact—sometimes too-close contact—with his renters, all of whom turn out to be women. In the hands of an author with darker leanings, this could have morphed into a creep show or even Psycho-esque territory, but Russo plays on the lighter side as the women in Bennett’s life (some intentionally, some otherwise) peel back his psyche, spurring him closer to some degree of self-awareness. 

The book lumbers out of the station a bit leisurely at first, but like a locomotive, it gains steam until Bennett’s life seems like it might derail. Can he regain his painting mojo, and even if he does, will it matter to the critics? And what will he do when his ex-wife, his tenant and his girlfriend all converge in competition for his affection?

Ultimately, Bennett discovers that his great new artistic challenge is one he hadn’t remotely anticipated: a return to the unfinished canvas that is his own self. And the critics he must attempt to win over aren’t the ones who write for newspapers or magazines; they are the people he holds most dear.