A Friend of the Family - Softcover

"This book is full of inisights and honesty ... These people will stay in your head and keep their hands on your heart. Grodstein's skills at storytelling are unwavering." (Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning author of OLIVE KITTERIDGE)

"In her wonderful second novel, Grodstein traces a suburban crisis and gives especially perceptive attention to the father-son bond... An astute dissector of male aspiration, Grodstein brings great insight into a father's protective urge for his son in this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis." (Publisher’s Weekly *Starred Review*)

"Beautifully told" (Evening Standard)

"A gripping account of paternal love gone wildly astray" (Helen Schulman, author of A DAY AT THE BEACH)

"There's nothing polemic or didactic about Grodstein's story, but she's written such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals ... What Grodstein captures so strikingly is the anxiety of a father's love ... Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant" (Washington Post)

Sometimes the wrong decisions can be made for the right reasons ...

Peter and Elaine Dizinoff have been friends with Joe and Iris Stern since medical school. Living the perfect life in a wealthy New Jersey neighbourhood, their children have grown up together and their lives are irrevocably intertwined. Until the Sterns are faced with a nightmare they could never have imagined - one that shatters the suburban idyll and forces both families to question everything they have ever believed in.

In time, the fragments of their fractured existence knit together once more, but the echo of their heartbreak still lies below the surface. And just when the Sterns have a chance to come to terms with their tragedy, Peter makes a fatal error of judgement that sends shock waves through all their lives, testing their friendship to the very limits and threatening to destroy it for ever ...