Family History

The Los Angeles Times

With Family History, a domestic drama about the havoc wreaked on a close, loving family by a teenage daughter whose adolescent misery spirals out of control, Dani Shapiro stakes her turf in the deliberately upsetting but ultimately heartwarming land of Parental Nightmare Fiction. — Heller McAlpin

The New York Times

Shapiro is a gifted writer, and Family History is a bona fide page turner. Rachel is so desperate you can't help wondering when she will hit bottom and turn around. — Emily White

The New Yorker

Disaster slams into the charmed lives of an arty couple in small-town Massachusetts when, after the birth of their second child, their teen-age daughter -- a beautiful, athletic, straight-A student -- suddenly becomes a foul-mouthed, self-mutilating terror. She injures her baby brother and makes a terrible accusation about her father that threatens to destroy the family entirely. The fierce emotional pitch would seem melodramatic were it not for Shapiro's understanding of the mother's anxious, guilt-ridden world. "It's expensive to have your life fall apart," she says as she struggles with the costs of keeping her fractured family afloat -- doctors, special schools, psychotherapy -- while observing her daughter's every sarcastic flicker to assess whether this is incipient psychosis or merely an awkward age.

Publishers Weekly

It's every parent's nightmare: you do your best, yet your child goes bad. With candor and tenderness, Shapiro (Playing with Fire) explores how a beloved, well-brought-up child can destroy a family. Rachel and Ned Jensen moved from a bohemian life in Greenwich Village to the Massachusetts town where Ned grew up when Rachel found herself pregnant with Kate. She hoped for a stellar career in art restoration; Ned was sure he'd find inspiration for his paintings in tiny Hawthorne. By the time Kate is a teenager, neither has occurred, but they're a happy family: Ned teaches at the Hawthorne Academy, Rachel works part-time; Kate is a beautiful, cheerful, popular 13-year-old. Then Rachel has another baby, Joshua, at age 39. Jealousy of her new brother, or some darker disturbance, turns Kate's ordinary teenage mood swings and shoplifting escapades into more venomous rebellion. After an accident occurs when Josh is in Kate's care, she spirals out of control, and makes wild accusations that do terrible damage to the Jensens' lives. The gripping narrative has the deeply felt emotional fidelity of a true story; it's a book some readers will finish in one sitting. The physicality of Rachel's maternal love-the need of a mother to touch her child, to feel it breathe-is almost palpable. Shapiro writes luminously about marital love and contented domestic routines, and with brutal insight about the corrosive misery of guilt and shame. Crafted with assurance, this novel holds a mirror to contemporary life. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and Literary Guild alternates; 5-city author tour. (Apr. 8) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Each family has a history and in parts of that history, there is happiness; other times there is sadness and even tragedy. This is a story of a family that seems to have everything going for it, and then adolescence hits. When Kate, the 12-year-old daughter of Rachel and Ned Jensen, goes off to camp, she is a happy child. But while she is gone, Rachel becomes pregnant and Kate has adjustment problems. When the young son, Josh, is severely injured while in Kate's care, the family falls apart. How they handle the crisis is a test of their family love. Shapiro writes with great insight and understanding of each of the characters, making this a truly gripping book. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Random House, Anchor, 269p., Ages 15 to adult.
—Nola Theiss

VOYA

Rachel and Ned first notice a change in their daughter, Kate, when they pick her up from summer camp. Their previously perfect-straight-A student, team captain-and popular thirteen-year-old is no longer a cheerful and open girl. That winter, what at first seems like normally rebellious teen behavior turns darker with the birth of her brother, Josh. When he is accidentally injured while in Kate's care, her world seems to fall apart. She makes wild accusations about Ned that destroy his teaching career and her parents' marriage. Ultimately, they must place her in an institution, where she continues to harm herself and those around her. The reader knows from the beginning that Kate is in an institution and that Ned and Rachel are separated, but what caused Kate to change? What did she do to destroy her happy family so completely? Shapiro effectively prolongs the suspense by alternating passages in the past and present. Especially poignant are Rachel's doubts about the wisdom of sending Kate away and about her own ability to forgive Kate's actions. Although this novel is narrated from an adult perspective, its focus and mystery is Kate. Seamlessly well written, intensely emotional, and impossible to put down, the book will catch teens with the suspense. The ending is hopeful but not unrealistically so. Shapiro inspires one to appreciate what one has and to recognize its fragility and understand the power of hope and forgiveness. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2003, Knopf, 269p,
— Angela Carstensen

Library Journal

In this fourth novel by Shapiro (Picturing the Wreck), Rachel Jensen, a woman with New York sensibilities and artistic sensitivity, finds her life in complete turmoil after an unfortunate family incident spirals out of control, leaving her separated from her husband of 15 years and with her teenage daughter in an exclusive reform school. Rachel's past unfolds as she tries to make sense of what has happened and of her growing dysfunction. Attempting to reconcile her former life as a caring mother and spouse who had a budding career in art restoration with the painful awareness that life will never be the same is just one of Rachel's dilemmas. Shapiro effectively depicts the emotional chaos of a family in pain and the loneliness that results when people are separated from loved ones. She keeps the book's tempo quick, and the reader is rapidly drawn into these people's lives. For the most part, the characters ring true except for Rachel's mother, who is predictable and stereotypical. Recommended for public library fiction collections and readers of romantic fiction. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/02.]-Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Shapiro (the memoir Slow Motion, 1998; Picturing the Wreck, 1996, etc.) returns with a "poor me" novel about a woman whose perfect family has disintegrated before her eyes. Rachel, the classic (and classically annoying) victim-heroine, is constantly resentful—her mother, her friends, her children, her husband have all disappointed her. Husband Ned has moved out of the house, toddler Josh may have developmental problems, and daughter Kate is in a boarding facility for troubled teenagers, where she’s just picked a fight with another girl. Despondent, Rachel looks back over her life with Ned. They fell in love in New York, where she was a grad student and he an aspiring artist. When she became unexpectedly pregnant, they married and moved back to Massachusetts, into a house his parents helped him buy; he took a job as a teacher and they doted on their daughter until the summer 13-year-old Kate returned from camp no longer their sunny, athletic, loving daughter, but a sullen tattooed and pierced adolescent (camps allow tattooing and piercing these days?). The incidents Rachel recalls—rudeness, shoplifting—could describe any teenager, but Rachel sensed that Kate’s problems were deeper, even though Kate seemed to rally after she learned Rachel was pregnant. But after unexpected complications kept Kate out of the birthing room, she began a downward emotional spiral that was exacerbated when she accidentally dropped seven-month-old Josh. Soon, she told her psychiatrist that Ned had sexually molested her. No one believed Kate, who’d also begun cutting herself, but Ned lost his job and took up selling real estate for his decent if insensitive parents. Rachel describes her own motheras evil and deranged, although her behavior seems no worse than that of most aging, neurotic mothers. Rachel and Ned visit Kate’s school, and after the girl acknowledges she did a terrible thing, the family joins in a group hug. Static. Gracefully written, but, after the first few chapters, nothing builds until the uplifting (and unearned) close. First printing of 75,000; Book-of-the-Month Club/Literary Guild alternate selection