THE FAMILY TREE

British journalist Cadwalladr’s debut, structured as a graduate thesis on pop culture in late-20th- century Britain, explores three generations of family relationships, beginning in WWII.

Narrator Rebecca moves back and forth between her present life of marriage to Alistair, a behavioral geneticist who doesn’t want children, and her childhood as the daughter of manic-depressive Doreen. Although Rebecca’s father comes from a higher social class than Doreen, his limited income is a source of great irritation. Cluelessly striving for upward mobility (readers will be reminded of BBC’s Hyacinth Bucket), Doreen is permanently jealous of her wealthier sister Suzanne. To salt the stew, Doreen dated and rejected Suzanne’s husband when he was an adolescent hippie in the ’60s. By 1979, he’s an uptight but successful doctor, and Suzanne is a trendy feminist who scorns Doreen’s affectations. Digging back further, Rebecca bonds with her maternal grandmother Alicia, seemingly a simple working-class woman, who has never recovered from the violent termination of her life’s great love affair with a black man from Jamaica. Cadwalladr’s use of charts and footnotes is clever enough and will win attention: she brilliantly captures the different decades in all their silliness. But what sets the book apart is the richness of Rebecca’s family history. The tragedies that befall her relatives begin as small details—an appreciative whistle, the color of Rebecca’s sister’s eyes, a snatch of conversation overheard—that lead to great misunderstandings. The misplaced guilt and accusation that inform much of the story come to a head when Doreen commits suicide after her manic preparations to celebrate Princess Diana’s wedding go awry. Meanwhile, in the present, Rebecca finds herself pregnant just as she realizes that Alistair is having an affair. Miraculously, The Family Tree never falls into melodrama.

Despite Rebecca’s light, self-mocking tone, this isn’t chick-lit. It’s women’s literature ready to take on the men—and a wonderful read at that.