Perfectly Good Family
Following the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not.
After having escaped for years to London, Corlis McCrea returns to the grand Reconstruction mansion where she grew up in North Carolina, now willed to the three grown children following the death of their parents. All three want the house.
Fiscal necessity dictates that two must buy a third out. Just as she was torn as a girl, the sister must choose between her decent younger brother and the renegade eldest—the black sheep who covets his legacy in order to destroy it. The adult siblings re-enact the deep enmities and loyalties of childhood, as each bids for a bigger slice of the pie.
LIONEL SHRIVER’s novels include the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin and the Sunday Times bestseller Big Brother. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.