Family Drama - The Perfect Thanksgiving Topic

Here is a huge surprise: I am not organized.  I don't have a desk planner with what will be in the blog from here until Thursday, never mind longer than that. And, I tend to read what I think will be the most interesting books first, and then I see they aren't coming out until July or March or next August. So, I read a bunch of books that I really want to wait to tell you about, but they will have to wait. 


But I do have this one that I got through Shelf Awareness coming out in December in print (see below, it came out for Kindle in June) and that's what is up for today:


The Radley's
Matt Haig
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 415 KB
Print Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Canongate Books (June 10, 2010)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services 

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Free Press (December 28, 2010)
an imprint of Simon and Schuster 
This was an ARC provided by the publisher in anticipation of a fair review. No remuneration was received.




When better to look at a family drama than the holidays?
Author Website Blurb:

Meet the Radleys

Peter, Helen and their teenage children, Clara and Rowan, live in an English town. They are an everyday family, averagely dysfunctional, averagely content. But as their children have yet to find out, the Radleys have a devastating secret.

From one of Britain's finest young novelists comes a razor-sharp unpicking of adulthood and family life. In this moving, thrilling and extraordinary portrait of one unusual family, The Radleys asks what we grow into when we grow up, and explores what we gain – and lose – when we deny our appetites.

A suburban British family, the Radley family appears normal,even typical.  Mom, Helen, was a med student who didn't finish to stay home with her kids. Dad, Peter, is a doctor. Apparently he did finish med-school. They have two teenage children. Rowan, the boy is sickly, itchy, and sensitive. Clara, the teen age girl, isn't considered as much of a "freak" as Rowan. 

Peter and Helen have been abstainers since becoming  parents and after many wild times where many people were drained, especially on Peter's part.  They've hidden the truth from their children. There is one fateful night where it becomes absolutely impossible to keep the truth from them.  Rowan feels betrayed, but for Clara, it is a rush. Peter has a brother from whom Helen and he are estranged. The kids are also unaware of this uncle, whose visit to the Radley household is the ubiquitous last straw.

Haig has built a unique vampire species with a behavioral code adhered to for the safety of all.   Haig has rewritten the vampire. Vampires are either abstainers, reminiscent of the temperance movement or AA, or they are rogue. Abstainers do all they can to blend in, eating a lot of meat to sustain them. Abstaining reduces them from a long vampire life to a more normal lifetime. It also makes them weak, tired, in Rowan's case itchy. It turns them into Vampire anorexics. And, they are either full blood, familial vampires or "made."Peter was born vampire, while Helen wanted to become vampire, no doubt thinking it similar to a religious conversion. Certain members of the police know about vampires and there is a special unit that deals with vampire crime.

 The details of Haig's vampire species are interesting, and should satisfy the needs of most vampire enthusiasts but, the vampirism is really a foil for the reality of being a family shakily maintaining a false lifestyle; like being the ex-hooker trying to become a a society matron, the mafia Don trying to keep his "profession" from touching his family, or someone running for office hoping that the skeletons don't start jumping out of the closet. The lifestyle and diet aren't sustaining the Radley's and the arrival of the uncle throws the carefully contrived existence completely off line. The  Radley's  choices; their lifestyle, are multi-layered, and offer a deep microscopic view of our  own choices.


The Radleys life begins to come apart even as the children acclimate to their new reality. And the assistance they need to maintain any semblance comes from two unlikely sources. Is the answer to regress to murderous, rogue vampires, do they suffer the consequences of failing to be who they are not. Or , is there a middle ground? 


I vote for the middle ground. All of us, in getting where we want to go, pretend to be who we are not. This is a matter of degree of pretense. Fake confidence versus lying on your resume, a white lie versus not telling a a person they have cancer. At times it isn't pretense that puts us in danger but difference. Not meeting the status quo can be dangerous no matter how it happens. 


At the start of this book the chapters are short, staccato and the rhythm is maintained. This could be of no import but it reminds me of a pulse - all bodies require a regular pulse. Throw a wrench into the regularity and nothing will work right. Sometimes the body is corporeal and sometimes it is metaphysical. In this carefully constructed tale both are needed. There are a lot of ways to restore a pulse to a regular rhythm.


This book is well written with great pace, a contemporary, spare writing style, and clearly built and defined characters. It is the family drama that will have people raving about this book, not the dietary needs of vampires. High marks to The Radleys!