Whether you love them or you hate them (or a little bit of both), family is often inescapable and almost always complicated [1]. Family dynamics provide fodder for great literature, as all readers can be brought together by the universal complexity of family drama, no matter the culture, composition, or economic status. From navigating generational differences [2] to divvying up inheritances, here are 20 nuanced novels about family that anyone can relate to. If you're planning to complete the 2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge [3], bookmark this page to cross the "book about a family" prompt off your list!
The Nest
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's hilarious debut, The Nest [5], tells the story of the four Plumb siblings as they come together to confront their eldest brother's destructive habits, as well as to figure out the fate of their joint trust fund, which they're all privately depending on to solve their financial woes.
Saints For All Occasions
In J. Courtney Sullivan's Saints For All Occasions [6], a funeral brings together two estranged sisters — a cloistered nun and the matriarch of a large Irish family — for the first time since they journeyed from their small village in Ireland to Boston 50 years before.
A Spool of Blue Thread
In the legendary Anne Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread [7], she explores several generations of the Whitshank family, their Baltimore family home, and all of the secrets and deceptions that they've carefully kept hidden throughout the years.
Family Matters
Set in 1990s Bombay, Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters [8] tells the story of an ageing patriarch whose advancing Parkinson's disease and recent injury leave him entirely dependent on his younger daughter, who must take him into the crowded flat she shares with her husband and two children.
The Heirs
The Heirs [9] by Susan Rieger follows the five Falkes brothers in the wake of their father Rupert's death, which becomes more complicated when a mysterious woman comes forward to claim that part of their estate belongs to her two sons, who were also fathered by Rupert.
How to Behave in a Crowd
Narrated by a shrewd eleven-year-old growing up in a small French village, Camille Bordas' How to Behave in a Crowd [10] follows Dory and his five bookish, oddball siblings as he struggles between fitting in with his misanthropic family or forging his own path.
The Turner House
Angela Flournoy's debut novel, The Turner House [11], is centreed around a family home on Detroit's East Side, the 13 children who have grown up and moved on from it, and the house's fate when the Turner matriarch's health starts to fail.
The Windfall
Diksha Basu's debut novel, The Windfall [12], tells the story of a middle-class East Delhi family, the Jhas, who come into a huge lump sum of money when Mr. Jha sells a website, and how this family learns to acclimate to their new riches — and their new social status.
Ghana Must Go
Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go [13] brings a mother and her four adult children — estranged and scattered throughout Boston, New Haven, New York, and London — back together in Ghana for the funeral of the father that abandoned them years before.
The Family Fang
In The Family Fang [14] by Kevin Wilson, two siblings — the children of eccentric performing artists — are brought back to their family home years later when their parents go missing, hoping to figure out whether their parents are really gone.
Let Me Explain You
Annie Liontas's debut, Let Me Explain You [15], tells the story of a Greek immigrant and proud diner owner who — believing he only has ten days to live — attempts to settle all of his grievances with his sceptical ex-wife and three adult daughters.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman
In Kaitlyn Greenidge's We Love You, Charlie Freeman [16], a family is recruited by a research institute to nurture and train a young abandoned chimp, a task that becomes complicated when the older daughter discovers the questionable nature of the institute's past studies.
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections [17] follows a family matriarch as she attempts to bring her three adult children home together for Christmas, desperate for something to look forward to in the face of her husband's losing battle with Parkinson's disease.
Commonwealth
Spanning five decades, Ann Patchett's Commonwealth [18] tells the story of two families that become intertwined by an affair and the famous author who turns their story into a bestselling novel, exploiting the childhood and the private tragedies of the Keating and Cousins children.
What We Were Promised
In Lucy Tan's debut, What We Were Promised [19], a family returns from chasing the American dream in suburban America to join an elite community in a radically transformed Shanghai. It is only when the estranged son returns to the family that they must confront the choices they made to ascend to this life.
Bone
Based in San Francisco's Chinatown, Fae Myenne Ng's Bone [20] tells the story of the Leongs, a Chinese-American family of five who struggle to understand what drove the middle daughter, Ona, to jump from the roof of a Chinatown housing project.
The Vacationers
Emma Straub's The Vacationers [21] follows the extended Post family during their two-week stay in Mallorca, where they hope to leave the tension developing at home in Manhattan behind, but only end up finding new ways to argue and expose one another.
The Wangs vs. the World
In Jade Chang's The Wangs vs. the World [22], a charismatic cosmetics mogul suddenly loses the empire he built due to a financial crisis. And so Charles Wang sets off with his family on a cross-country trip from their repossessed Bel Air estate to upstate New York, where the eldest Wang daughter lives.
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits [23] follows three generations of the Trueba family and the bond that forms between a proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter, born as a result of a forbidden love affair.
Orchid & the Wasp
In the first novel from award-winning Irish novelist Caoilinn Hughes, Orchid & the Wasp [24], a young, savvy opportunist hustles her way through Dublin, London, and New York trying to save her family from economic collapse, but ends up losing herself in the process.