When Anna, Portia and Emery’s mother, Louise, suffers a massive heart attack, the three grown children return to California to be with their parents. Anna, once certain that her free-loving parents were going to die of syphilis, continually thinks about sex with strangers; Portia, managing an unfaithful husband, mourns her carefree, teenage beach-bunny days; and Emery, who once lived in fear that the police would arrest his parents for any one of their transgressions (growing marijuana; peeing in public; the time Louise quit being a housewife and gave Emery’s care over to eight-year-old Portia), now worries that he won’t be able to create his own family, a new, improved version that will trump the impetuousness and chaos that ruled his childhood home.
But this time together will not only pull the siblings back together – it will also bring to the surface sometimes painful, often heartbreaking secrets that will shake the foundations of everything they know about themselves and assume about their family—secrets that may, perhaps, change the way they view their past as well as their future. There is nothing like ten days with one's family to bring forth old obsessions and childhood memories.
My thoughts
Drinking Closer to Home is about one dysfunctional family, but not much different than the thousands of dysfunctional families in this nation. When their mother, Louise suffers a heart attack, her three children come back for ten days and suffer the anxiety that homecomings entice, bringing up childhood fears and secrets, and having to deal with one’s siblings. Jessica Anya Blau’s novel is amusing look at family and individual relationships. One must read this novel slowly, like sipping a fine wine, although it is not for everyone.
Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher. I received no compensation for my thoughts.
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