A Family Affair

The season for gathering with kith and kin is nearly upon us--for good or ill--and I can't think of a better time to dip into The Red House, Mark Haddon's piquant account of an extended family’s misbegotten attempt to spend quality time together.

This tale, full of sound and fury, is told sequentially by the various family members exiled together in Dysfunction Junction. Richard is a well-to do surgeon; he has invited his more or less estranged sister, Angela, her unemployed husband and their three kids (a teenage boy with raging hormones, a teenage daughter who has inexplicably joined a fundamentalist sect, and a little boy with little boy issues) to join him, his new wife and her sulky, mean-girl teenager for a week straight from hell in a rented house in the English countryside.

This family doesn’t travel light--they bring along plenty of baggage filled with quirky habits, guilty secrets,