This book is about a family with one of each, as a friend of mine would put it—a homosexual son, a daughter who can't seem to choose the right husband, a mother who's cheating, and a father who's obsessed with his own mortality. George's anxiety over his wife Jean's affair, or perhaps the fact that she might leave him, has led to his being convinced that a patch of eczema is really cancer. George becomes increasingly irrational, while his daughter Katie has second thoughts about her upcoming marriage and his son Jamie realizes that he has lost the love of his life. George's hilarious actions have just the right amount of poignancy as we witness just how pitiful he has become. Still, everyone in the family is wrestling with his/her relationship issues in an offbeat comical manner. Jean ultimately has to choose between her unbalanced husband and her lively lover, who George unwittingly invites to dinner. Jamie has to try to win Tony back and overcompensates for his past inhibitions with regard to his sexual orientation in the presence of his family. Katie weighs her family's disapproval and her own emotional detachment against the knowledge that Ray, her dull fiancé, is a loving and sane partner, contrasting sharply with her charismatic but shallow ex-husband. Here's a family that has definitely put the fun back in dysfunctional.
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