Families And Survivors

By Alice Adams

“A you-can’t-put-it-down book. . . . Alice Adams has found a new way to tell the great American dynasty stories we all love.”  --The Washington Post
 
Alice Adams’ second novel is the portrait of a Southern-born woman as she reviews her life.
 
From Louisa Calloway’s Southern girlhood to her debut to her first marriage, all the time surrounded by a certain tradition and all the time resisting. In lieu of her conservative, bigoted father, she chooses men who are liberal, free-spoken, Jewish. Nevertheless her first marriage is unhappy, but her second promises to be sounder, as she discovers what she really wants, can have, can become—what she really is.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307798213

Alice Adams

Alice Adams has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Bristol and an MA from the University of Manchester, and since a stint as an analyst in the City has had fiction published in various places including The Times and Dark Mountain. This is her first novel. She lives in north London but escapes into the wilderness as often as possible.

Reviews for Families And Survivors

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Louise from 1941 to 1971. We first meet Louise as a precocious teenager poolside with her best friend, Kate. As her story moves languidly through the years we watch Louise get married, have a child, have affairs, struggle with self-image and artistry and of course, grow older. Along the way we see both sides of wealth, both sides of ambition, both sides of a Southern versus Yankee culture.Something to get used to - Adams includes a lot of parenthetic information. I found it to be a little distracting at first. And oddly enough, for the first ten years the perspective is third person about Louise then there is a switch to first person Maude, Louise's daughter. Coming to that point was like unexpectedly hitting a speed bump in the center of town.