A delightfully quirky debut about family bonds and the chaos that ensues when nature and lack of nurture collide.
Emily Glass knows she’s neurotic. But she’s got it under control. Sort of. She dons compression socks when she flies (because, you know, deep vein thrombosis) and responds to people routinely overestimating her age with more Lifespin classes and less gluten. Thankfully, she also has David, the wonderful man she’ll soon call husband—assuming they can survive wedding week with her wildly dysfunctional family.
Emily’s therapist mother, Marla, who’s been diagnosing her children since they were in diapers, sees their homecoming as the perfect opportunity for long-overdue family therapy sessions. Less enthused are Emily and her two siblings: ardently feminist older sister Lauren, who doesn’t think the wedding party should have defined gender roles, and recently divorced brother Jason, whose overzealous return to singlehood is only tempered by his puzzling friendship with David’s Renaissance Faire–enthusiast brother.
As the week comes to a tumultuous head, Emily wants nothing more than to get married and get as far away from her crazy relatives as possible. But that’s easier said than done when Marla’s meddling breathes new life into old secrets. After all, the ties that bind family together may bend, but they aren’t so easily broken.
Laugh-out-loud funny and endearingly raw, Family and Other Catastrophes is as entertaining as your favorite sitcom and introduces Alexandra Borowitz as an outstanding new voice in humorous fiction.
Family and Other Catastrophes
Alexandra Borowitz
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Alexandra Borowitz 2018
Alexandra Borowitz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9781474077088
Praise for Family and Other Catastrophes
“The perfect book for anyone with a calamity of a family who wants to laugh along in knowing hilarity. Alexandra Borowitz has written characters who we hate to love but yet we do (love them) because we know these people intimately, they are our own family.”
—Ann Garvin, USA TODAY bestselling author of I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around
“Family and Other Catastrophes is, hands down, one of the funniest novels I’ve read this year. The members of the Glass clan are as hilarious as they are cringe-worthy, and Alexandra Borowitz’s rendering of family dysfunction is charming, insightful, and wickedly smart. Honestly, the only real catastrophe here is that this wonderful book had to end.”
—Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
Contents
NIGHT 5, PART 1: THE BOYS - Jason
NIGHT 5, PART 2: THE GIRLS - Emily
David
“DOES THIS DRESS make my nose look big?”
Emily Glass stood at the mirror brushing her hair. Her pink sundress was tight around the torso and flared out at the hips.
“How could a dress make your nose look big?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “With my nose, you have to be careful.