House of Happy Endings Book

I liked this book very much--beautifully written, lovingly recollected, a sadly dysfunctional family observed with compassion and understanding.

The book offers a remarkable look at the complex and often destructive relationships within a family that depended upon the royalty income earned from the grandparents' syndicate mass market books, while at the same time the parents and children (including Garis herself) were embarrassed by the books, which the family seemed, at least in Leslie's retelling, to think of as a little silly, even vulgar. Roger Garis, Leslie's father, raised his literary sights much higher (culturally speaking) than his father's Uncle Wiggly or his mother's Bobbsey Twins. A serious, sensitive playwright with mental health issues, he was distraught when his work was rejected by the New York critics and snobby East Coast literati.

I particularly liked the early part of the book, which is skillfully told through the perception (and the confusions) of a child. But not all the chapters are of the same quality. I felt that the lengthy reports of her father's illness could have been compressed or told narratively, rather than through long quotations of medical documents. For the most part, though, this is a strong and compelling story.