Status Updates From Domek z piernika

Why does this novel feel so unbearably sad, if what it narrates --familial conflict, illness and death, time changing it all, our fallible memory and the impossibility of knowing our loved ones fully, the alienation and monetization brought by modern tech-- is utterly normal, universal human experience? And yet I needed a pause and emotional palate cleanser after reading two chapters yesterday.

Can't decide if what Egan has captured through her characters is brilliant or cliched, but leaning toward the first, for how can the Upstate NY kids of college professor be so foreign yet a transplant from my own past?
Judgmental Miles, chameleon Ames, histrionic Alfred.