The Great Wide Open Av Douglas Kennedy

<p>‘Accomplished…a strangely mesmerising effect…absolutely excellent’<br> <i>New Statesman</i><br><br><b>New York, 1980s</b><br><br>Alice Burns – a young book editor – is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations within resonate, perhaps, because she has just watched her own family implode.<br><br>As she reads she wonders: When did the sadness start? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice?<br><br>Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970s Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the US embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan.<br><br>But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers – how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others.<br><br><b><i>The Great Wide Open</i> is an immensely ambitious and compulsive saga; a novel which will speak volumes to anyone who has marvelled at that pain that can only be caused by family itself.</b></p>