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Family of Origin
When Nolan Grey receives news that his father, a once-prominent biologist, has drowned off Leap's Island, he calls on Elsa, his estranged, older half-sister, to help pick up the pieces. This, despite the fact that it was he and Elsa who broke the family in the first place. The Greys have been avoiding each other for a dozen years.
Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast. Here, their father's fatalistic colleagues, the Reversalists, obsessively study the undowny bufflehead, a rare sea duck whose loss of waterproof feathers proves, they say, that evolution is running in reverse and humanity's best days are behind us.
On an island that is always looking backward, it's impossible for the siblings to ignore their past. Stuck together in the close quarters of their island stilt-house, and provoked by the absurd antics of the remaining Reversalists, years of family secrecy and blame between Elsa and Nolan threaten to ruin them all over again. As the Greys urgently trek the island to find the so-called Paradise Duck, their father's final obsession, they begin to fear that they were their father's first evidence that the future held no hope.
In the irreverent and exuberant spirit of Kevin Wilson, Alissa Nutting, and Karen Russell, CJ Hauser speaks to a generation's uncertainties: Is it possible to live in our broken world with both scientific pragmatism and hope? What does one generation owe another? How do we know which parts of the past, and ourselves, to jettison and which to keep? Delightfully funny, fiercely original, high-spirited and warm, Family of Origin grapples with questions of nature and nurture, evolution and mating, intimacy and betrayal, progress and forgiveness.
Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast. Here, their father's fatalistic colleagues, the Reversalists, obsessively study the undowny bufflehead, a rare sea duck whose loss of waterproof feathers proves, they say, that evolution is running in reverse and humanity's best days are behind us.
On an island that is always looking backward, it's impossible for the siblings to ignore their past. Stuck together in the close quarters of their island stilt-house, and provoked by the absurd antics of the remaining Reversalists, years of family secrecy and blame between Elsa and Nolan threaten to ruin them all over again. As the Greys urgently trek the island to find the so-called Paradise Duck, their father's final obsession, they begin to fear that they were their father's first evidence that the future held no hope.
In the irreverent and exuberant spirit of Kevin Wilson, Alissa Nutting, and Karen Russell, CJ Hauser speaks to a generation's uncertainties: Is it possible to live in our broken world with both scientific pragmatism and hope? What does one generation owe another? How do we know which parts of the past, and ourselves, to jettison and which to keep? Delightfully funny, fiercely original, high-spirited and warm, Family of Origin grapples with questions of nature and nurture, evolution and mating, intimacy and betrayal, progress and forgiveness.
287 pages, Hardcover
First published July 16, 2019
153 people are currently reading
7440 people want to read
About the author
C.J. Hauser
5 books408 followersCJ HAUSER is the author of the novels The From-Aways (William Morrow 2014) and Family of Origin (Doubleday 2019).
Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, and The Kenyon Review, and she is a recipient of The Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from The Florida State University.
Hauser lives in Hamilton, New York where she teaches creative writing and literature at Colgate University.
Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, and The Kenyon Review, and she is a recipient of The Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from The Florida State University.
Hauser lives in Hamilton, New York where she teaches creative writing and literature at Colgate University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 250 reviews
May 18, 2020
This was a very ‘out-of-the-box’ type of book choice for me—which paid off.
I liked it a lot....but not without - at first- a little jump-start help from the author herself.
I found an article that CJ Hauser wrote that put me in a much better place to begin her book - than on my own blind faith.
I had enjoyed two reviews on Goodreads from Paltia and Melissa...which intrigued me days before getting my own library book to read —-but by the time I had the book, I couldn’t remember what I liked about their reviews. ( but I ‘do’ thank them both for inspiring me to check this book out).
I loved the book cover - but that alone didn’t help pull me out of my
distraction-mode. The authors words did!!!
Here is what I found on the internet - direct from CJ Hauser:
“Before I began work on ‘Family Origin”, I had started to write a kind of dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel out of a state of despair. Then, I decided to interrogate my own thoughts about pessimism instead. I took a step back, and I thought, I’m actually interested in what it means to be a person alive today — who had to contend with the current climate of chaos and gloom. So I chucked the old book and started a new one. I’d be in 175 pages in, but books have died later”.
“‘Family Origin’ is about a movement of scientists called the Reversalists, who think evolution is running backward. They are wrong, but they’re so deeply misanthropic that they’ve started doing bad science to prove all of their bad opinions. The book is about that dystopian mood, that doom-and-gloom spirit, and what it would take for someone to go so far down the road that they almost give up on the world”.
“I have a bunch of evolutionary biologist and ornithologists in the book. Originally, there were scenes of these scientist characters doing science— and all the scenes of my first draft were of people endlessly shuffling through great stacks of paper— which was mortifying. So I went to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, to study the whooping crane, through an organization called Earth Watch, which pairs scientists and civilians who are interested in participating in research. This way I could get closer to representing these characters’ work accurately”.
The article goes on and tells about how CJ Hauser spent 10 days trapping through the mud....etc etc.
I was inspired and ready to begin this novel.
“Family of Origin”, was a very enjoyable - quirky- hilarious- and a heartfelt reading experience!!!!!
As NPR said......”it’s a spirited defense of the maligned millennial generation. It’s also an innovative work of climate change fiction, a nuanced and empathetic family story, and, for my money, the summers best novel so far”.
Radical honesty storytelling at its best!!!!
I liked it a lot....but not without - at first- a little jump-start help from the author herself.
I found an article that CJ Hauser wrote that put me in a much better place to begin her book - than on my own blind faith.
I had enjoyed two reviews on Goodreads from Paltia and Melissa...which intrigued me days before getting my own library book to read —-but by the time I had the book, I couldn’t remember what I liked about their reviews. ( but I ‘do’ thank them both for inspiring me to check this book out).
I loved the book cover - but that alone didn’t help pull me out of my
distraction-mode. The authors words did!!!
Here is what I found on the internet - direct from CJ Hauser:
“Before I began work on ‘Family Origin”, I had started to write a kind of dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel out of a state of despair. Then, I decided to interrogate my own thoughts about pessimism instead. I took a step back, and I thought, I’m actually interested in what it means to be a person alive today — who had to contend with the current climate of chaos and gloom. So I chucked the old book and started a new one. I’d be in 175 pages in, but books have died later”.
“‘Family Origin’ is about a movement of scientists called the Reversalists, who think evolution is running backward. They are wrong, but they’re so deeply misanthropic that they’ve started doing bad science to prove all of their bad opinions. The book is about that dystopian mood, that doom-and-gloom spirit, and what it would take for someone to go so far down the road that they almost give up on the world”.
“I have a bunch of evolutionary biologist and ornithologists in the book. Originally, there were scenes of these scientist characters doing science— and all the scenes of my first draft were of people endlessly shuffling through great stacks of paper— which was mortifying. So I went to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, to study the whooping crane, through an organization called Earth Watch, which pairs scientists and civilians who are interested in participating in research. This way I could get closer to representing these characters’ work accurately”.
The article goes on and tells about how CJ Hauser spent 10 days trapping through the mud....etc etc.
I was inspired and ready to begin this novel.
“Family of Origin”, was a very enjoyable - quirky- hilarious- and a heartfelt reading experience!!!!!
As NPR said......”it’s a spirited defense of the maligned millennial generation. It’s also an innovative work of climate change fiction, a nuanced and empathetic family story, and, for my money, the summers best novel so far”.
Radical honesty storytelling at its best!!!!
August 5, 2019
How could you NOT love a novel in which you find this sentence:
The past is no reason not to have sandwiches.
Am I right?
Family of Origin, by CJ Hauser, is about love and its evolution and extinction, its adaptation to its environment and the challenges with which it is faced.
Elsa Grey, and her younger and estranged brother, Nolan, travel to Leap's Island, an isolated community of mostly disgraced or discredited scientists who are dedicating themselves to the study of a particular duck --- the undowny bufflehead --- which seems to be experiencing reverse evolution, a regression they posit is a harbinger for the entire planet earth, in particular, the human race. Elsa and Nolan's father was one of those scientists, but he has drowned, and the siblings travel to the island to retrieve his belongings.
But, Nolan has other quests to do with the Greys' fractured family past as agenda, while Elsa wishes, at first, to avoid and deny that same history, to get on with and over with the island chore and return to her obsession --- escaping her teaching career and being among the first one hundred people to colonize Mars, a position for which she needs soon to travel abroad for the next set of interviews.
The novel starts with the Greys meeting on Watch Landing, from which they'll take the once weekly boat to Leap's Island. Then we go back twenty-five years to their first meeting as children, step-siblings, when Elsa left Nolan in an abandoned well. We're then back on the island, in the present. Then one week back in San Francisco with Nolan and his girlfriend. Then the island, present. Then one week back with Elsa and her current life. Then the island. Then ... you get the picture. It feels as if an awful lot of novels of late are written with this back and forth structure, and it often feels as if an editor has said to the author, "Hmmm, your story lacks a compelling sense of propulsion, no tension --- how about you rearrange the timeline, start with the near-ending, and jump all over in time, eking out bits of the backstory?"
However, in Family of Origin, the concatenation of details from the family's histories works perfectly. It feels organic and just exactly right for this story in which both Elsa and Nolan, in their week on the island and shortly thereafter, also deal --- piece by piece --- with histories they may have re-written, misunderstood, forgotten, made huge unto crippling. The leaps are handled by CJ Hauser with great aplomb and skill.
Also handled with much grace, the lack of quotation marks. Dear god, people --- what is this no quotation marks trend happening? Perhaps (likely, even) I am too simple a mind to grasp the artistic-literary-fictive purpose of dropping quotation marks after centuries of them being put to perfectly good use in writing to clarify what the heck is going on and who's talking about it. Can someone brainier let me know why this absence of speech indicators seems to be happening with increasing frequency?
I know, I'm always carping about something --- a while back it was the INCESSANT use of forms of the word THRUM in EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. THING. I. READ.
Don't get me wrong, it didn't bother me in this novel. CJ Hauser has skills. But, in many (most) cases, I think it muddies the waters, and I am always suspicious when a novelist deviates from straightforward novel-ing that they (or their editor) hasn't faith enough in the story itself, and so resort to gimmickry. Not the case here. Let me say again, CJ Hauser has mad skills as writer and story-teller.
A few examples of sentences (or paragraphs) that GOT me:
This paragraph on the first page, before we've actually met Elsa and Nolan:
They were fondlers of old grudges and conjurers of childhood Band-Aid smells. They were rescripters of ancient fights and relitigators of the past. They were scab-pickers and dead-horse-beaters and wallowers of the first order.
Now THAT is a paragraph that tells you nearly everything you need to know about what kind of family the Greys are, yes? (And, maybe for you, as for me, rings uncomfortably close to how one's own family is.)
And for whom doesn't this next one ring true?
Again, Nolan wished there was some more adult-adult whose job this could be.
That's gorgeous. And the coining of adult-adult --- sort of glorious. And this, when Elsa's lover removes her hand from his crotch, and holds it instead:
Holding hands instead. That's what things were like with Dylan. He understood that sometimes when Elsa thought she wanted sex, what she really wanted was something else much smaller. He knew that she was afraid to ask for small things like this because the need in them did not seem big enough to draw attention. That she was afraid her small needs would go unnoticed, and so she made plays at bigger ones instead.
Read it out loud; just the rhythm of the words, the way in which the paragraph starts with those three words: Holding hands instead. Bravely wrought as a complete sentence, a sentence the follow-up to which could go almost anywhere, but, in fact, in another short burst, no judgment --- the holding hands instead isn't good or bad --- it just is how things are with Dylan, who, it is clear, knows Elsa better than she knows herself. And how appropriate to the character, Elsa's mind, Elsa's heart, that so many of these sentences are actually fragments. Not whole. Thought pieces. Much left to interpretation.
It is a beautiful thing when an author tells the reader about a character not just through description and action, but, too, with the shape of the sentences, the syntax and forms used to give us the heart and essence of the character.
Here's another about Elsa which moved me to tears. Elsa is thinking about how she and her mother are the only people left who know Nolan intimately, closely. (NOTE: My mother died recently, and I have been struggling with who I am without her, who I am without the someone who knew me closest, from the moment I was born. So, fair to tell you that.)
...The intimacy came with a responsibility, and as she considered this, she felt as if she'd lost a game of hot potato. Because being there for Nolan was not her job. It couldn't be. After all, she'd been redacted from Nolan's history a long time ago. Elsa's whole life, she felt, was a series of events in which she'd been redacted from the lives of people she'd been tricked into loving. Kicked out of stories she'd been stupid enough to think were her own.
If paragraphs were plays in a theatre, I'd be on my feet, cheering (and weeping) for that one. First of all, close third is tricky --- sometimes the omniscient narrator can be overbearing and too informed. In this case though, CJ Hauser's careful placement of qualifiers --- as she considered this, and, she felt as if, and she felt --- which let us know these are Elsa's opinions, we are inside her psyche, and her feelings and considerations are not necessarily the truth of her life, but, rather, the symptoms of her sorrow. The word choices --- redacted, tricked, kicked --- with their percussive k-sounds and placement make the paragraph near-poetry. Its sounds convey the harsh-hurt heart that beats in Elsa.
Like I said, skills. Mad writing skills.
I read Family of Origin very quickly. When interrupted, I was annoyed, and couldn't wait to get back to it. And while the characters are not --- in most cases --- seemingly sympathetic, somehow CJ Hauser manages to evoke in the reader a sense of connection and recognition; Ahhh, they're fallible humans, like me.
This is a moving, emotionally loaded journey which can be read as a brother-sister- parent story, on its surface, but is about so much more, and so relevant now, being about a world in which evolving and moving forward may seem to require destroying the past, and where growth may seem, at first, to be destruction, and where evolution and devolution are often simultaneous and their outcome dependent upon one's reaction to them.
Loved it. Great read. Thought provoking. Well edited and proof-read (what a relief, because lately, argh). And a HIGH recommend.
SPOILER --- DO NOT READ FURTHER IF PLOT SURPRISES ARE IMPORTANT TO YOU
Caveat: I cannot help but wonder if the genders of Elsa and Nolan had been reversed, and an older brother (just turned 20) had done to a younger sister (14) what this older sister did to a younger brother, if it would have read as sympathetically as it did?
The past is no reason not to have sandwiches.
Am I right?
Family of Origin, by CJ Hauser, is about love and its evolution and extinction, its adaptation to its environment and the challenges with which it is faced.
Elsa Grey, and her younger and estranged brother, Nolan, travel to Leap's Island, an isolated community of mostly disgraced or discredited scientists who are dedicating themselves to the study of a particular duck --- the undowny bufflehead --- which seems to be experiencing reverse evolution, a regression they posit is a harbinger for the entire planet earth, in particular, the human race. Elsa and Nolan's father was one of those scientists, but he has drowned, and the siblings travel to the island to retrieve his belongings.
But, Nolan has other quests to do with the Greys' fractured family past as agenda, while Elsa wishes, at first, to avoid and deny that same history, to get on with and over with the island chore and return to her obsession --- escaping her teaching career and being among the first one hundred people to colonize Mars, a position for which she needs soon to travel abroad for the next set of interviews.
The novel starts with the Greys meeting on Watch Landing, from which they'll take the once weekly boat to Leap's Island. Then we go back twenty-five years to their first meeting as children, step-siblings, when Elsa left Nolan in an abandoned well. We're then back on the island, in the present. Then one week back in San Francisco with Nolan and his girlfriend. Then the island, present. Then one week back with Elsa and her current life. Then the island. Then ... you get the picture. It feels as if an awful lot of novels of late are written with this back and forth structure, and it often feels as if an editor has said to the author, "Hmmm, your story lacks a compelling sense of propulsion, no tension --- how about you rearrange the timeline, start with the near-ending, and jump all over in time, eking out bits of the backstory?"
However, in Family of Origin, the concatenation of details from the family's histories works perfectly. It feels organic and just exactly right for this story in which both Elsa and Nolan, in their week on the island and shortly thereafter, also deal --- piece by piece --- with histories they may have re-written, misunderstood, forgotten, made huge unto crippling. The leaps are handled by CJ Hauser with great aplomb and skill.
Also handled with much grace, the lack of quotation marks. Dear god, people --- what is this no quotation marks trend happening? Perhaps (likely, even) I am too simple a mind to grasp the artistic-literary-fictive purpose of dropping quotation marks after centuries of them being put to perfectly good use in writing to clarify what the heck is going on and who's talking about it. Can someone brainier let me know why this absence of speech indicators seems to be happening with increasing frequency?
I know, I'm always carping about something --- a while back it was the INCESSANT use of forms of the word THRUM in EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. THING. I. READ.
Don't get me wrong, it didn't bother me in this novel. CJ Hauser has skills. But, in many (most) cases, I think it muddies the waters, and I am always suspicious when a novelist deviates from straightforward novel-ing that they (or their editor) hasn't faith enough in the story itself, and so resort to gimmickry. Not the case here. Let me say again, CJ Hauser has mad skills as writer and story-teller.
A few examples of sentences (or paragraphs) that GOT me:
This paragraph on the first page, before we've actually met Elsa and Nolan:
They were fondlers of old grudges and conjurers of childhood Band-Aid smells. They were rescripters of ancient fights and relitigators of the past. They were scab-pickers and dead-horse-beaters and wallowers of the first order.
Now THAT is a paragraph that tells you nearly everything you need to know about what kind of family the Greys are, yes? (And, maybe for you, as for me, rings uncomfortably close to how one's own family is.)
And for whom doesn't this next one ring true?
Again, Nolan wished there was some more adult-adult whose job this could be.
That's gorgeous. And the coining of adult-adult --- sort of glorious. And this, when Elsa's lover removes her hand from his crotch, and holds it instead:
Holding hands instead. That's what things were like with Dylan. He understood that sometimes when Elsa thought she wanted sex, what she really wanted was something else much smaller. He knew that she was afraid to ask for small things like this because the need in them did not seem big enough to draw attention. That she was afraid her small needs would go unnoticed, and so she made plays at bigger ones instead.
Read it out loud; just the rhythm of the words, the way in which the paragraph starts with those three words: Holding hands instead. Bravely wrought as a complete sentence, a sentence the follow-up to which could go almost anywhere, but, in fact, in another short burst, no judgment --- the holding hands instead isn't good or bad --- it just is how things are with Dylan, who, it is clear, knows Elsa better than she knows herself. And how appropriate to the character, Elsa's mind, Elsa's heart, that so many of these sentences are actually fragments. Not whole. Thought pieces. Much left to interpretation.
It is a beautiful thing when an author tells the reader about a character not just through description and action, but, too, with the shape of the sentences, the syntax and forms used to give us the heart and essence of the character.
Here's another about Elsa which moved me to tears. Elsa is thinking about how she and her mother are the only people left who know Nolan intimately, closely. (NOTE: My mother died recently, and I have been struggling with who I am without her, who I am without the someone who knew me closest, from the moment I was born. So, fair to tell you that.)
...The intimacy came with a responsibility, and as she considered this, she felt as if she'd lost a game of hot potato. Because being there for Nolan was not her job. It couldn't be. After all, she'd been redacted from Nolan's history a long time ago. Elsa's whole life, she felt, was a series of events in which she'd been redacted from the lives of people she'd been tricked into loving. Kicked out of stories she'd been stupid enough to think were her own.
If paragraphs were plays in a theatre, I'd be on my feet, cheering (and weeping) for that one. First of all, close third is tricky --- sometimes the omniscient narrator can be overbearing and too informed. In this case though, CJ Hauser's careful placement of qualifiers --- as she considered this, and, she felt as if, and she felt --- which let us know these are Elsa's opinions, we are inside her psyche, and her feelings and considerations are not necessarily the truth of her life, but, rather, the symptoms of her sorrow. The word choices --- redacted, tricked, kicked --- with their percussive k-sounds and placement make the paragraph near-poetry. Its sounds convey the harsh-hurt heart that beats in Elsa.
Like I said, skills. Mad writing skills.
I read Family of Origin very quickly. When interrupted, I was annoyed, and couldn't wait to get back to it. And while the characters are not --- in most cases --- seemingly sympathetic, somehow CJ Hauser manages to evoke in the reader a sense of connection and recognition; Ahhh, they're fallible humans, like me.
This is a moving, emotionally loaded journey which can be read as a brother-sister- parent story, on its surface, but is about so much more, and so relevant now, being about a world in which evolving and moving forward may seem to require destroying the past, and where growth may seem, at first, to be destruction, and where evolution and devolution are often simultaneous and their outcome dependent upon one's reaction to them.
Loved it. Great read. Thought provoking. Well edited and proof-read (what a relief, because lately, argh). And a HIGH recommend.
SPOILER --- DO NOT READ FURTHER IF PLOT SURPRISES ARE IMPORTANT TO YOU
Caveat: I cannot help but wonder if the genders of Elsa and Nolan had been reversed, and an older brother (just turned 20) had done to a younger sister (14) what this older sister did to a younger brother, if it would have read as sympathetically as it did?
August 5, 2022
3.25. Although I like Hauser's writing and the complicated and odd family dynamics intrigued me, this novel didn't ever gel for me. Too many disparate pieces.
September 15, 2019
C.J. Hauser practically takes you by the hand, offers you a comfortable seat and sits beside you to tell this story. Written with an intimacy and style that made me feel right at home. By the book’s end I felt as if I’d spent time with the characters rather than read words about them. Two half siblings travel, separately, to an island off Florida in an effort to grieve, discover what happened to their father, and to hopefully heal. I really enjoyed this book from start to finish. There are some twists and turns which though not necessarily unexpected, still result in a highly satisfactory conclusion. This reads with flow and change, the movement of life. The characters may halt what is to be, by crushing it, before their relationship has a chance to express all that it can become. Fresh and open, alive with the joys and sorrows of reunion and the potential of the pleasures in coming back together.
Much like the legend of how the turtle got it’s shell which is an inherent piece of this story. A family breaking apart and maybe finding their way towards putting the pieces back together again. I’ll definitely be looking for more from this writer.
Much like the legend of how the turtle got it’s shell which is an inherent piece of this story. A family breaking apart and maybe finding their way towards putting the pieces back together again. I’ll definitely be looking for more from this writer.
dnfs
September 21, 2019DNF at 45%
apparently it's too much to ask for a nice brother-sister bonding story that doesnt involve incest
apparently it's too much to ask for a nice brother-sister bonding story that doesnt involve incest
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2020
What first drew me to this book? When I saw it at an indie bookstore, the jacket was face-out, displaying the frilly butt of a diving duck. Score. This could be right up my science- and nature-loving alley, I thought. Then I saw the word ‘family’ was in the title. Score. This could be right up my character-driven, emotion-loving alley, I thought. And then I read the jacket copy which describes the father’s study of “the undowny bufflehead, a rare sea duck whose loss of waterproof feathers proves that evolution is running in reverse and humanity’s best days are behind us.”
That was all it took! The father’s scientific study is a framework in the book that mirrors not only humanity’s actions and possible fate, but also the trajectory of the two main characters, Elsa and Nolan.
This novel is filled with whip-smart writing, deep emotion, and a sprinkling of perfectly placed humor. To those who are Millennials, or to those who give Millennials a bad rap, there is much to chuckle over in this book that tackles family dysfunction and environmental issues with a light touch…
A conversation between Boomer-aged scientists and Millennial-aged tree-hugging geniuses takes place; the Boomers don’t want the millennials on their research island:
Most of the Reversalists’ research had started not with the ducks, but with their abiding sense that something had gone unstoppably wrong with the world, and that the generation of young people rising up were the cause of it. At best, the millennials were stupid, lazy, entitled narcissists who could not be trusted. At worst, Mick and Jim and the whole of their generation were an evolutionary step backwards for humanity… Millennials didn’t take anything seriously.
In response, Jim and Mick:
Like your old asses aren’t the ones who *ucked everything up in the first place, Jim said.
Like you all weren’t smoking cigarettes and building SUVs and making bubble after bubble and destroying the world economy, Mick said.
Like you guys aren’t the ones who clearcut forests and removed mountaintops and drilled and drilled, Jim said.
I laughed aloud at these exchanges… And on it goes. It should be noted, however, that this book isn’t a self-righteous environmental book. While it draws light to these topics with light brushstrokes (and often humor), this really is a book focused almost entirely on a brother and sister, their family, and their journeys of acceptance: of themselves and their places in the world.
This is one of those books that is so well written through action – in particular, it is the mannerisms, the familiarity between characters and their actions, and the things not said that make it so believable.
As the book jacket reads, the book “speaks to a generation’s uncertainties: Is it possible to live in our broken world with both scientific pragmatism and hope? What does one generation owe another? ..Family of Origin grapples with questions of nature and nurture, evolution and mating, intimacy and betrayal, progress and forgiveness.”
What an interesting, smart literary novel with lots of symbolic layers and metaphors and an intelligent structure that often goes in reverse and then forward (in support of the theme)! So glad the book jacket grabbed me in the book store! Loved this one.
That was all it took! The father’s scientific study is a framework in the book that mirrors not only humanity’s actions and possible fate, but also the trajectory of the two main characters, Elsa and Nolan.
This novel is filled with whip-smart writing, deep emotion, and a sprinkling of perfectly placed humor. To those who are Millennials, or to those who give Millennials a bad rap, there is much to chuckle over in this book that tackles family dysfunction and environmental issues with a light touch…
A conversation between Boomer-aged scientists and Millennial-aged tree-hugging geniuses takes place; the Boomers don’t want the millennials on their research island:
Most of the Reversalists’ research had started not with the ducks, but with their abiding sense that something had gone unstoppably wrong with the world, and that the generation of young people rising up were the cause of it. At best, the millennials were stupid, lazy, entitled narcissists who could not be trusted. At worst, Mick and Jim and the whole of their generation were an evolutionary step backwards for humanity… Millennials didn’t take anything seriously.
In response, Jim and Mick:
Like your old asses aren’t the ones who *ucked everything up in the first place, Jim said.
Like you all weren’t smoking cigarettes and building SUVs and making bubble after bubble and destroying the world economy, Mick said.
Like you guys aren’t the ones who clearcut forests and removed mountaintops and drilled and drilled, Jim said.
I laughed aloud at these exchanges… And on it goes. It should be noted, however, that this book isn’t a self-righteous environmental book. While it draws light to these topics with light brushstrokes (and often humor), this really is a book focused almost entirely on a brother and sister, their family, and their journeys of acceptance: of themselves and their places in the world.
This is one of those books that is so well written through action – in particular, it is the mannerisms, the familiarity between characters and their actions, and the things not said that make it so believable.
As the book jacket reads, the book “speaks to a generation’s uncertainties: Is it possible to live in our broken world with both scientific pragmatism and hope? What does one generation owe another? ..Family of Origin grapples with questions of nature and nurture, evolution and mating, intimacy and betrayal, progress and forgiveness.”
What an interesting, smart literary novel with lots of symbolic layers and metaphors and an intelligent structure that often goes in reverse and then forward (in support of the theme)! So glad the book jacket grabbed me in the book store! Loved this one.
September 12, 2019
I hated this, and finished it mostly so that I could authoritatively say I hated it. Spoilers ahead.
As many others have said, I loved Hauser's essay "The Crane Wife" in The Paris Review and immediately put this on hold to read. The biggest issue, for me, is that there is a central plot point of sexual abuse that the story is ill-equipped to handle and is unsure whether to even recognize as abuse. However, if the genders were reversed - a 20-year-old man having sex with a 14-year-old girl, much less one raised as his sister - it would have been obvious and the story wouldn't have been written. Additionally, there was a repeated continuity error - Elsa being less than six years older than Nolan, and yet somehow their father left when she was six - that grated.
The prose was beautiful, and the ending was strangely moving. But I couldn't get beyond the fact that the strangeness of the sibling relationship dares us to think something is wrong from the beginning, and yet doesn't fully explore its wrongness. I hope Nolan can find a good therapist in this fictional universe.
As many others have said, I loved Hauser's essay "The Crane Wife" in The Paris Review and immediately put this on hold to read. The biggest issue, for me, is that there is a central plot point of sexual abuse that the story is ill-equipped to handle and is unsure whether to even recognize as abuse. However, if the genders were reversed - a 20-year-old man having sex with a 14-year-old girl, much less one raised as his sister - it would have been obvious and the story wouldn't have been written. Additionally, there was a repeated continuity error - Elsa being less than six years older than Nolan, and yet somehow their father left when she was six - that grated.
The prose was beautiful, and the ending was strangely moving. But I couldn't get beyond the fact that the strangeness of the sibling relationship dares us to think something is wrong from the beginning, and yet doesn't fully explore its wrongness. I hope Nolan can find a good therapist in this fictional universe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2019
Half-siblings Nolan and Elsa go to the Gulf-coast island where their father died, and where lives a group of scientists who believe evolution is going backward. And that's just the set-up. What follows is a perfectly, wondrously weird novel that never misses an emotional beat, one that handles its big ideas--and there are many: evolution, family, millennials--so intimately and organically. This novel will surprise you, move you, make you consider how different generations might live alongside each other, and what it takes to grow up, in our time, or any time.
July 29, 2019
I was looking forward to reading this because I'd enjoyed other work by the author, but I was disappointed. While the writing is solid and the concept of family is explored in depth here, I found the characters to be lacking depth and humanity. The supposed surprises and shocking events of the past are neither, and the characters' many irrational ideas and actions came across as silly and foolish. The in medias res structure of the book--where there are flashbacks going increasingly far back from the book's present--felt messy and over done. One or two major flashbacks, sure, but by the end of the book, the farthest-away flashbacks felt irrelevant and impeded the flow of the narrative.
August 14, 2019
“The Greys were scientific about their misery.”
This book checked all the boxes for me: weird family dynamics, intellectually stimulating subject matter, strange and thoughtful insights on everything from millennial culture to human evolution.
Following the death of their father, Ian, estranged siblings Elsa and Nolan reunite on a remote island in the Gulf Coast where Ian had spent his final years. Ian was part of a pop-science doomsday cult known as the Reversalists, whose members believe that human progress has reached its end and that evolution is now reversing course. The main subject of their research is a peculiar bird called the undowny bufflehead, which has seemingly defied evolution.
While on the island, the siblings try to learn more about their father’s research, each secretly fearing that they are the ones initially responsible for his belief that the future held no hope.
Can evolution go too far? Would becoming less efficient and less geared toward survival make us happier? On the contrary, does indulging in happiness make us bad at survival? What does one generation owe another? And which parts of ourselves should we let go of in order to proceed into a hopeful future?
Hauser challenges us to ask ourselves all these questions and more, and in doing so she really captures the sense of doomed urgency that burdens millennials—not only about the fate of the planet, but about the seeming futility of our own lives and relationships in the face of everything happening around us.
I loved this book so much. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
This book checked all the boxes for me: weird family dynamics, intellectually stimulating subject matter, strange and thoughtful insights on everything from millennial culture to human evolution.
Following the death of their father, Ian, estranged siblings Elsa and Nolan reunite on a remote island in the Gulf Coast where Ian had spent his final years. Ian was part of a pop-science doomsday cult known as the Reversalists, whose members believe that human progress has reached its end and that evolution is now reversing course. The main subject of their research is a peculiar bird called the undowny bufflehead, which has seemingly defied evolution.
While on the island, the siblings try to learn more about their father’s research, each secretly fearing that they are the ones initially responsible for his belief that the future held no hope.
Can evolution go too far? Would becoming less efficient and less geared toward survival make us happier? On the contrary, does indulging in happiness make us bad at survival? What does one generation owe another? And which parts of ourselves should we let go of in order to proceed into a hopeful future?
Hauser challenges us to ask ourselves all these questions and more, and in doing so she really captures the sense of doomed urgency that burdens millennials—not only about the fate of the planet, but about the seeming futility of our own lives and relationships in the face of everything happening around us.
I loved this book so much. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
March 28, 2019
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'Elsa and Nolan Grey might have been happier if they could be forgetful, or dead, but they were not. The Greys remembered everything.
They were fondlers of old grudges and conjurers of childhood Band-Aid smells. They were rescripters of ancient fights and relitigators of the past. The were scab-pickers and dead-horse-beaters and wallowers of the first order.'
Could it really be? Could evolution be going in reverse? A group of scientists, researchers and naturalists known as the Reversalists on the Gulf Coast believe it is so. Studying a rare species of duck, the Undowny Bufflehead, having discovered its feathers are not waterproof serves as a sign that evolution has reversed it’s course. Subsequent to their father’s death by drowning, the Grey siblings join one another at Watch Landing on Leap Island to make sense of it all. With the knowledge that their father Dr. Ian Grey retreated to the island under the umbrella of shame for entertaining such an outlandish theory based on a ‘ridiculous’ duck of all things, Elsa is filled with fury. Surely he didn’t believe such a crackpot theory, not a man as intelligent as her father!
There is no love lost between the siblings, in Elsa’s eyes Nolan is needy and weak, despite looking so much like their father and having spent years ‘sucking up their father’s time’ he certainly didn’t inherit the old man’s genius. When her father left he started his ‘new family’ with Nolan’s mother Keiko, a microbiome researcher. The real wound for Elsa was in all her father’s disappearances, the first costing her the joys of life at the farmhouse her mother Ingrid (a nurse), she and Dr. Grey lived at. Nolan, forever the usurper of her former life, of course as a child she hated him. Nolan’s feelings for Elsa are tangled up, having an effect on every relationship and choice in his life. Elsa, always ‘taking up more space than she deserved’ in his mind and heart. There is a fault line beneath them created by actions in their past, something Elsa does her utmost best to avoid.
Family of origin is often defined as the people who care for you, your siblings, people you grow up with and certainly a fitting title as Elsa and Nolan suffer the miseries created by their own. Mostly blame for their dysfunctional upbringing to be laid at their father’s feet, cold from his watery grave. Who swims in a storm? Was it an accident or something worse? Nolan and Elsa are equally shocked to know that Ian’s fellow islanders took his work seriously. The two certainly feel that coming here could have been just another escape from them, could the duck and their father’s belief in reversalism really just be about his own children, their lack of evolution as competent successful offspring?
Elsa struggles in her own day-to-day, teaching children, with a terrible lapse in judgement just before Nolan’s call about their father. Not dealing well with people in general, living life in a numbed state, just floating along. She longs for escape that would put a vast distance between her and others, much further than Dr. Ian and his little island could have hoped to be. Meeting Esther Stein who holds a PhD in ecology, her disdain for the youth is obvious, with all their ‘allergies’ and inability to venture into the very environment they live in. It’s hard to deny all the young adults and children are changing as much as the ducks. People are no longer adapting! Just look around, you’ll see it too! The Millennials are ruining the species, coddled, weak and if their dad believed that to be true as much as Esther, than he didn’t believe in his own children, right? That stupid duck is a representation of their own failure.
This story is about confronting the past, and the real mystery is between Nolan and Elsa more than their father’s death. Elsa can run off to another planet but isn’t going to erase what’s between them. There are secrets to uncover but does knowing change their personal history, the weight they have carried because of it? What happens when the object of your anger is gone, or the person you resented is more victim than the villain of the story you thought was set in stone? One thing is certain, Elsa and Nolan are far more curious a study than the rare species of duck! It doesn’t take a fictional story to nudge us in the direction that we humans often seem to be hopeless creatures, destroying our environment and much of the novel seems hopeless in that aspect. Worse, we tend not to evolve in our personal surroundings too, as evidenced by the Grey siblings. We carry the wrong stories, and poison our own well so to speak and of course we can blame our ‘family of origin’ for that, at least Elsa and Nolan can. How are we to understand the natural world when we live with so much subterfuge coming at us from all directions? Nolan and Elsa are forced to face their own hopelessness, and maybe change direction because it’s not really about the duck.
Publication Date: July 16, 2019
Doubleday Book
'Elsa and Nolan Grey might have been happier if they could be forgetful, or dead, but they were not. The Greys remembered everything.
They were fondlers of old grudges and conjurers of childhood Band-Aid smells. They were rescripters of ancient fights and relitigators of the past. The were scab-pickers and dead-horse-beaters and wallowers of the first order.'
Could it really be? Could evolution be going in reverse? A group of scientists, researchers and naturalists known as the Reversalists on the Gulf Coast believe it is so. Studying a rare species of duck, the Undowny Bufflehead, having discovered its feathers are not waterproof serves as a sign that evolution has reversed it’s course. Subsequent to their father’s death by drowning, the Grey siblings join one another at Watch Landing on Leap Island to make sense of it all. With the knowledge that their father Dr. Ian Grey retreated to the island under the umbrella of shame for entertaining such an outlandish theory based on a ‘ridiculous’ duck of all things, Elsa is filled with fury. Surely he didn’t believe such a crackpot theory, not a man as intelligent as her father!
There is no love lost between the siblings, in Elsa’s eyes Nolan is needy and weak, despite looking so much like their father and having spent years ‘sucking up their father’s time’ he certainly didn’t inherit the old man’s genius. When her father left he started his ‘new family’ with Nolan’s mother Keiko, a microbiome researcher. The real wound for Elsa was in all her father’s disappearances, the first costing her the joys of life at the farmhouse her mother Ingrid (a nurse), she and Dr. Grey lived at. Nolan, forever the usurper of her former life, of course as a child she hated him. Nolan’s feelings for Elsa are tangled up, having an effect on every relationship and choice in his life. Elsa, always ‘taking up more space than she deserved’ in his mind and heart. There is a fault line beneath them created by actions in their past, something Elsa does her utmost best to avoid.
Family of origin is often defined as the people who care for you, your siblings, people you grow up with and certainly a fitting title as Elsa and Nolan suffer the miseries created by their own. Mostly blame for their dysfunctional upbringing to be laid at their father’s feet, cold from his watery grave. Who swims in a storm? Was it an accident or something worse? Nolan and Elsa are equally shocked to know that Ian’s fellow islanders took his work seriously. The two certainly feel that coming here could have been just another escape from them, could the duck and their father’s belief in reversalism really just be about his own children, their lack of evolution as competent successful offspring?
Elsa struggles in her own day-to-day, teaching children, with a terrible lapse in judgement just before Nolan’s call about their father. Not dealing well with people in general, living life in a numbed state, just floating along. She longs for escape that would put a vast distance between her and others, much further than Dr. Ian and his little island could have hoped to be. Meeting Esther Stein who holds a PhD in ecology, her disdain for the youth is obvious, with all their ‘allergies’ and inability to venture into the very environment they live in. It’s hard to deny all the young adults and children are changing as much as the ducks. People are no longer adapting! Just look around, you’ll see it too! The Millennials are ruining the species, coddled, weak and if their dad believed that to be true as much as Esther, than he didn’t believe in his own children, right? That stupid duck is a representation of their own failure.
This story is about confronting the past, and the real mystery is between Nolan and Elsa more than their father’s death. Elsa can run off to another planet but isn’t going to erase what’s between them. There are secrets to uncover but does knowing change their personal history, the weight they have carried because of it? What happens when the object of your anger is gone, or the person you resented is more victim than the villain of the story you thought was set in stone? One thing is certain, Elsa and Nolan are far more curious a study than the rare species of duck! It doesn’t take a fictional story to nudge us in the direction that we humans often seem to be hopeless creatures, destroying our environment and much of the novel seems hopeless in that aspect. Worse, we tend not to evolve in our personal surroundings too, as evidenced by the Grey siblings. We carry the wrong stories, and poison our own well so to speak and of course we can blame our ‘family of origin’ for that, at least Elsa and Nolan can. How are we to understand the natural world when we live with so much subterfuge coming at us from all directions? Nolan and Elsa are forced to face their own hopelessness, and maybe change direction because it’s not really about the duck.
Publication Date: July 16, 2019
Doubleday Book
August 20, 2019
Family of Origin follows half siblings Nolan and Elsa (who have a VERY WEIRD sexual tension between them???!) after their father's unexpected death. Their father, Ian, is a "Reversalist," who lived on a secluded island with people who believe that evolution has started going backwards and we are all doomed. Also, Elsa wants to colonize Mars? And there is this ongoing theme of *we can't pinpoint when we became unhappy but we are deeply unhappy*, but really their lives are pretty normal and they like to melodramatically blame others for their *suffering*? And everyone in the book hates millenials on principle? If this all sounds very weird it's because IT IS.
After they set you up with that wild ride of a premise, nothing interesting happens the rest of the book.
2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 because there are NO QUOTATION MARKS in the WHOLE BOOK.
After they set you up with that wild ride of a premise, nothing interesting happens the rest of the book.
2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 because there are NO QUOTATION MARKS in the WHOLE BOOK.
February 10, 2019
Marvelous book about an estranged brother and sister who travel together to an island of odd scientists who feel that they’ve discovered the reverse of evolution with a non-waterproof species of duck. The siblings are going to the island because after living there for the past two years, their father has been found to have drown. A really rich story of all the joy, anger, recrimination that one family holds in the open and in secret.
March 22, 2019
A funny and emotionally rich story of family, healing, and secrets. Compassionate. A good warm read.
Thank you to C.J. Hauser, Doubleday and Goodreads. I received this book in a Goodreads Giveaway and this is my honest review.
Thank you to C.J. Hauser, Doubleday and Goodreads. I received this book in a Goodreads Giveaway and this is my honest review.
November 9, 2019
Family of Origin is a disturbing tale of two siblings who feel isolated and alone, despite living in big cities and recent relationships. When their father dies in a remote discredited cult of sorts, they decide to visit the locale and investigate whether he killed himself.
Trigger warning for readers—statutory rape is a topic in the book. The author, C.J. Hauser, penned the acclaimed The Crane Wife. There’s no doubt she’s a talented writer but be forewarned she does not shy away from difficult topics and characters.
The central characters, Elsa and Nolan, are estranged siblings who disagree on whether or not their father died by suicide. It’s a dark book that may not work for everyone.
Trigger warning for readers—statutory rape is a topic in the book. The author, C.J. Hauser, penned the acclaimed The Crane Wife. There’s no doubt she’s a talented writer but be forewarned she does not shy away from difficult topics and characters.
The central characters, Elsa and Nolan, are estranged siblings who disagree on whether or not their father died by suicide. It’s a dark book that may not work for everyone.
August 12, 2019
I would round this up to 2.5 stars. I really wanted to love this one, but it was just okay for me. It was well-written, but I’m just not that interested in dysfunctional family stories. Finding out that Elsa and Ian were not related was not enough to mediate the horror of her as a 20-year-old seducing a 14-year-old. Hauser touched on the why’s some, but I just don’t think she handled it well.
Also, the lack of quotation marks drove me a little crazy.
Also, the lack of quotation marks drove me a little crazy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2019
More like 2.5 stars. I primarily read this book because I loved the author's piece in the Paris Review from this summer: Check it out here.
(To be honest, I liked that piece more. Not that the book is bad. I just found its themes to be a bit muddled, even though the author tries to plainly spell them out at the end.)
Oh, and don't bone your brother.
(To be honest, I liked that piece more. Not that the book is bad. I just found its themes to be a bit muddled, even though the author tries to plainly spell them out at the end.)
Oh, and don't bone your brother.
December 7, 2023
I enjoyed the story and the characters quite a lot. Some of the metaphors and word repetition ("constellation" for one, as well as "like a fat man shifting weight") were not great... is this my primary literary gripe of the year? I'm glad I read, though.
September 14, 2020
This both is and isn't the fun family dramedy I was expecting at the beginning. The overall premise is fine enough: half siblings Elsa and Nolan journey to an island of psuedo-scientists where their father Ian, a once-respected biologist who took up the belief that evolution is now selecting for disadvantageous traits, drowned. The novel goes back and forth on whether he was a good dad; Elsa and Nolan have good memories and Nolan especially seeks any affirmation that he's like his dad, but they both felt like he was kind of absent and view his island residency as a rejection of them. Some shit went down between Elsa and Nolan and now they're each trying to find the moment where "everything went wrong" while poking around Ian's research.
If you'd like to be spared the reading - the "moment" is a compilation of 3 moments: What kind of daddy issues???? It's not even though Elsa is very clearly an authority figure for Nolan, who, again, was 6 years younger than her.
I kept reading to see if anyone in the family would note the clear power imbalance and address the fact that Elsa's reactions to perceived abandonment are way out of proportion, but instead
The writing in this book is breezy and lighthearted, and the plot is set up so the is kind of beside the point, but I don't see how this isn't being mentioned in every review.
If you'd like to be spared the reading - the "moment" is a compilation of 3 moments: What kind of daddy issues???? It's not even though Elsa is very clearly an authority figure for Nolan, who, again, was 6 years younger than her.
I kept reading to see if anyone in the family would note the clear power imbalance and address the fact that Elsa's reactions to perceived abandonment are way out of proportion, but instead
The writing in this book is breezy and lighthearted, and the plot is set up so the is kind of beside the point, but I don't see how this isn't being mentioned in every review.
August 5, 2019
I loved this. It made me think and left me wanting more. There are so many stories contained within this book that could’ve been their own novel.
abandoned
August 20, 2019dnf. writing is good but there are some things (laid out by other reviewers) that i do NOT like and am not invested enough to find out how it is fleshed out.
abandoned-for-now
October 19, 2019not for me right now. One of the themes is too distressing; another too tedious.
July 25, 2019
“Because it meant that she could stop staring over her shoulder at everything that had come before, searching for the day that came before the pain. There was no place further back to go. To find any kind of happiness, Elsa would have to turn around.”
Okay. So, this book reminded me of Tell the Wolves I'm Home. Not that the plots are that similar () but in that they both made me so deeply uncomfortable that I didn't really know whether I even liked the book until I got to the end and realized I loved it. Any heavy examination of plot will ruin your enjoyment of this novel, so I don't want to say much beyond the plot summary. I would encourage people when they reach the moment where they say WTF?!?!?! to give it a chance and keep reading. The weirdness is still weird but so much is explained. Sorry for the cryptic remarks but I really don't want to spoil the reading experience for anyone.
Another comparison I could make is to the works of Barbara Kingsolver for the way it examines both the environment, and dysfunctional family relationships, and the way that these two issues mirror each other. The title Family of Origin becomes more and more evocative the further you get into the book - there are elements of Darwinism, environmentalism, found families, dysfunctional families, etc. that all could contribute to the meaning of the title. I love a title with multiple meanings!
Thank you to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Okay. So, this book reminded me of Tell the Wolves I'm Home. Not that the plots are that similar () but in that they both made me so deeply uncomfortable that I didn't really know whether I even liked the book until I got to the end and realized I loved it. Any heavy examination of plot will ruin your enjoyment of this novel, so I don't want to say much beyond the plot summary. I would encourage people when they reach the moment where they say WTF?!?!?! to give it a chance and keep reading. The weirdness is still weird but so much is explained. Sorry for the cryptic remarks but I really don't want to spoil the reading experience for anyone.
Another comparison I could make is to the works of Barbara Kingsolver for the way it examines both the environment, and dysfunctional family relationships, and the way that these two issues mirror each other. The title Family of Origin becomes more and more evocative the further you get into the book - there are elements of Darwinism, environmentalism, found families, dysfunctional families, etc. that all could contribute to the meaning of the title. I love a title with multiple meanings!
Thank you to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
August 31, 2019
So beautifully written but so, so strange. I’m not sure I’ve read anything like it and I’m not sure what to do with it.
July 4, 2019
Thank you to Net galley for sending me a copy of this book. The story of estranged half siblings traveling to the research island where their father died. Overall an engaging read with a few minor problems. The good: traveling back and forth in time revealing history in phases works well here; also, the backstories of the scientists are especially interesting. The not as good: the 2 main characters are difficult to like or even sympathize with. The author’s main premise seems to be that life is ultimately disappointing so try hard to appreciate what’s around you even if you spend half your life at it. That theme gets a bit tiresome and the siblings seem to grow at an excruciatingly slow pace. The lessons we are supposed to learn about evolution in reverse is not only bad science but doesn’t connect well with the siblings’ story overall.
April 14, 2019
What does it actually mean to be family? Is it nature? Is it nurture? And what dynamics shape us as a family and define us as a unit? CJ Hauser's "Family of Origin" builds the story of the Grey family that no one but Nolan and Elsa want (and absolutely need) to talk about. Fierce, funny, and real, "Family of Origin" is a story of a family that grapples with what it means to progress through tragedy and forgiveness. This story speaks to the reader in the most honest and real way that a book of this caliber can.
August 22, 2019
The writing in this is SO GOOD, and the relationship between Elsa and Nolan is SO WEIRD and makes me feel icky.
I liked the way Elsa and Nolan are referred to as "the children" throughout the whole book, really highlighting the way all (most? all.) Millennials still feel like children no matter how grown we become.
I liked the way Elsa and Nolan are referred to as "the children" throughout the whole book, really highlighting the way all (most? all.) Millennials still feel like children no matter how grown we become.
January 22, 2020
Family of Origin was one of those books that kind of baffled me. Looking back and writing this review, I'm unsure of what it was even really about... Family? Modern families? A search for the unknown? I really can't be sure. Despite all that however, I got through this book quite quickly. It flowed gently and that's what kept me coming back for more.
It's a very good example of Hauser's literary prowess, but I felt disconnected to the storyline somewhat. Something kept me on the surface as opposed to diving in. Hopefully not the last I'll read from this author.
It's a very good example of Hauser's literary prowess, but I felt disconnected to the storyline somewhat. Something kept me on the surface as opposed to diving in. Hopefully not the last I'll read from this author.
August 16, 2019
4+ stars. Original and weird and beautifully written. It can be a little slow at times but that somehow fits with the Florida setting. This book is not for everyone and there's a development that almost put this into DNF for me...but I kept with it and this turn is handled so poignantly that it was almost shocking that she could pull it off. Well done.
September 17, 2019
I did not love this as much as I thought I would. It’s another attempt at a millenial novel but it fell well short of its conceit. I was initially repulsed by the (half) siblings having sex but I must say that Hauser handled this incredibly well ultimately and used it to very interesting effect. But still, gross.
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