Hi! I’m looking for new book recs. I’m looking for books about dysfunctional families or life isn’t going the way the main character wants. Something like This Is Where I Leave you. Bonus if it has overbearing parents or parents struggling with addiction. Preferably something funny, but it doesnt have to be. Thank you!
Maybe something like The glass castle from Jeannette Walls.
Catch 22
So old and not really funny, but with a lot of “life not going the way they wanted”:
The children of Torremolinos - James Michener
https://diebuchsuche.de/buch-9783570041895.html
(German ISBN ISBN: 3570041891)
I read this as a teenager and I haven’t forgotten about it since. Generational conflict, addiction, lots of other emotional topics - I guess it fits perfectly for modern times as well
My journal
Slaughterhouse-Five
Probably a little different than what you’re describing but I’m reading blood meridian right now and it’s very good. It’s about a 14-year-old runaway in 1850s America where everything is fucked. He gets in increasingly desperate and violent situations to try and survive
I read these books as a kid: A series of unfortunate events
Count Olaf: “Going my way?”
Like Wind Against Rock by Nancy Kim
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis
Sisters One, Two, Three by Nancy Star
Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand
I was surprised how heart wrenching Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was. Growing up I heard it was about meatpacking plants in Chicago. Technically correct, but very much a tale of things not going well. Enjoyed the journey despite the sadness!
Great Expectations
A wolf at the table
Take a look at the works of David Sedaris. Those fit the description, and are funny.
I haven’t read This is Where I Leave, so don’t know how similar it is, but I really liked Demon Copperhead & it fits your criteria - trials and hardship but with some humor.
Demon Copperhead is a good book! I liked how Barbara described his birth as him in a bag or something. It was very descriptive.
I have an e-book reader, so I looked it up: “Mom had her own version of the day I was born, which I never believed, considering she was passed out for the event. Not that I’m any witness, being a newborn infant plus inside a bag. But I knew Mrs. Peggot’s story. And if you spent even a day in the company of her and my mom, you would know which of those two lotto tickets was going to pay out.”
Something like that, yeah. It’s the part when the neighbor discovers the baby in like a gray sack or something? I remember something about boxing being said. I’ll re-read the chapter.
Naive Super
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen features a pretty dysfunctional family and has some funny bits.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is probably one of my favorite novels and has both a dysfunctional family and characters living in a halfway house. It’s main motif is addiction, be it to entertainment or substance. However, at a over 1000 pages and with a non-linear plot, it might require some persistence to get through.
