The Awkward Age

A very smart, soulful, compelling, elegantly written domestic novel about a wedged-together family, and what can go wrong when teenage children decide they have minds (and hormones) of their own. --Nick Hornby "A spry and accomplished comedy of manners." --The New York Times Book Review "They´ve chosen the one thing that will make our family life impossible. It´s genius really, when you think about it. It´s the perfect sabotage." Julia Alden has fallen deeply, unexpectedly in love. American obstetrician James is everything she didn´t know she wanted--if only her teenage daughter, Gwen, didn´t hate him so much. Uniting two households is never easy, but when Gwen turns for comfort to James´s seventeen-year-old son, Nathan, the consequences will test her mother´s loyalty and threaten all their fragile new happiness. This is a moving and powerful novel about the modern family: about starting over; about love, guilt, and generosity; about building something beautiful amid the mess and complexity of what came before. It is a story about standing by the ones we love, even while they make mistakes. We would give anything to make our children happy. But how much should they ask?