I'm Back in Florida and Reading Like Mad!

Apologies to all for my AWOL status. While on the road from Maryland to Florida I learned of the sudden death of a dear, longtime friend in Massachusetts. Home only long enough to exchange one suitcase for another, I flew north for several days of reunions and reminiscences. It was a bittersweet time for reflection on family and friendships.

So what better way to face the long flight back than to delve into a new book, due out this week, about - you guessed it - family and friendships. "Seven Days of Us" by Francesca Hornak kept me happily occupied for the three hours plus that we hurtled through the air with Jet Blue.

As I was reading I kept thinking, this is made for the stage. In fact, it presents almost like a screenplay, with short, punchy chapters that each focus on a different member of the Birch family as they face the week between Christmas and New Year's, often tense in the best of circumstances, under a medical quarantine at their rambling estate in the English countryside.

Daughter Olivia is a physician whose penchant for helping out in the remotest parts of the world rarely brings her home for the holidays. That's just the way she likes it. But this year, she's been in Liberia facing a crisis that sounds much like the Ebola outbreak and, until she's declared disease free, no one can leave the house.

Her folks, Andrew and Emma, dance around each other like strangers. Each appears lost in his own world, Andrew's, a career decision hanging over his head, and Emma's, a potential life-threatening diagnosis. During their long marriage they've grown apart and lost the joy of communicating.

And then there's Phoebe, the younger daughter, always considered a flighty, flibbertigibbet, whose only interests are clothes, makeup, jewelry and beating her friends to the altar. Maybe that's why she's accepted a marriage proposal from George, a pompous slacker from a wealthy family with whom she's been keeping company for years.

I've often thought how problematic families can be. After all, just because they are related by blood doesn't always mean that they have much in common in terms of interests, passions, or temperaments. Put yourself, if you can, into the Birch family's situation and think about the potential for volatility when an outside party suddenly enters the frame.

Because that's just what happens when Jesse, a young American filmmaker in search of his birth father,  (and maybe a documentary), tracks down Andrew and decides to just knock on the door. Merry Christmas! A delightful character, Jesse is the catalyst the breaks the repressed Birches wide open. Hornak's prose is snappy, funny, poignant, and sarcastic in equal measure. Why was I not surprised when I read that her novel has already been optioned for British TV?

This is a warm, wonderful read that explores the quirkiest trait that most families share. We may not always like each other but, oh, how we do love each other.