13 books about families and the ties that bind us
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Families. You love them. You tolerate them. You occasionally wonder how you’re related to them.
And then there's the peculiar phenomenon of getting everyone together in one room, where decades-old grievances can suddenly seem as urgent as they did when you were 14.
It's no wonder writers keep coming back to families. The love, loyalty, jealousy, resentment, and outright absurdity could keep them busy forever.
We've gathered 13 unforgettable books that take complicated family relationships in completely different directions—from outrageous comedies and family mysteries to moving memoirs and literary classics.
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Seven days under one roof with your mother and three siblings. What could possibly go well?
Judd Foxman’s father has died, and the family has gathered to sit shiva. Judd arrives with another loss to contend with: his wife has been having an affair with his boss. Privacy, tact, and a little space to process things would be helpful. He’s come to the wrong house.
The Foxmans have plenty to say to one another, much of it ill-advised. Expect sharp exchanges, crude jokes, and adults who should know better. There’s real grief here, too, mixed in with the wisecracks. You’ll find yourself laughing at this family and wincing on Judd’s behalf within the same conversation.
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Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
The Lees believe they know their daughter Lydia. They know what they want for her, at least.
When the teenager is found dead in a lake, her family begins searching for an explanation. Set in small-town Ohio in the 1970s, Ng’s debut follows a Chinese American household in which each parent has placed a different, deeply personal hope on the same child.
The mystery gives the novel its pull, even as the family’s past gradually changes our understanding of the people involved. Lydia’s siblings matter here, too, especially her younger sister whose presence sometimes gets overlooked. The whole book is a glimpse into the thoughts the family members never share with one another, making their misunderstandings all the more painful.
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Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Meddy Chan has accidentally killed her blind date. Her mother’s response is to call in the aunties.
Unfortunately, the body ends up in a cake cooler bound for the lavish wedding the family’s business is working. There’s also an ex-boyfriend at the resort, because apparently the corpse wasn’t enough to keep Meddy occupied.
Sutanto’s Chinese-Indonesian family comedy combines romance, meddling relatives, and a cover-up that keeps getting more unwieldy. Things keep getting more absurd, and the aunties remain absolutely convinced they can handle this.
For this one, a willingness to suspend disbelief and let yourself enjoy the romp will serve you well. So will an appreciation for relatives who interfere in every aspect of your life and then turn up, in force, when you need them.
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The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Rex Walls can teach his children about physics, fill their heads with adventure, and promise to build them a glass castle. Keeping them fed and safe is another matter.
Jeannette Walls’s memoir follows a childhood shaped by her father’s drinking, her mother’s resistance to ordinary parental responsibilities, and the siblings’ growing reliance on one another.
There’s a reason this memoir was a best seller. Walls tells her story directly and vividly, without pretending she simply despises her parents. There’s humor and affection alongside serious neglect. Walls can make you understand why a child would adore Rex, even as you desperately want someone to stop trusting him.
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French Braid by Anne Tyler
The Garretts’ first and last family vacation takes place in 1959. Even away together, they seem to be having separate experiences.
From there, Anne Tyler follows this Baltimore family across decades: children grow up, relationships shift, and Mercy, the mother, makes increasing room for painting and a life of her own.
If you're an Anne Tyler fan, you'll appreciate her gift for finding the extraordinary in ordinary family life. And if her quietly observant, character-driven novels aren't your thing, this one probably won't change your mind.
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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede is the practical sister. Ayoola is the beautiful one. When Ayoola’s boyfriends start turning up dead, practicality acquires some alarming new responsibilities.
Set in Lagos, this short, darkly comic novel puts Korede in charge of cleaning up her sister’s messes—quite literally. Then Ayoola attracts the attention of the doctor Korede loves, and an already untenable arrangement becomes painfully personal.
Brief chapters and a cool, deadpan voice give the story its speed. Underneath the murders are recognizable sibling grievances: favoritism, resentment, and the expectation that the responsible one will take care of everything. But the unusual and compelling premise pushes those grievances somewhere wonderfully sinister.
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The Lost Family by Libby Copeland
An at-home DNA test begins with a little curiosity about your ancestry. But the results may require a much larger conversation.
In The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are, journalist Libby Copeland follows people whose genetic discoveries disrupt what they believed about their origins. One woman’s pursuit of an explanation for unexpected results gives the book a central detective story, threaded through reporting on genealogy, testing companies, and the science involved.
It’s easy to see how you could become absorbed in the search: an unexpected result, another clue, a relative who might have answers. But finding those answers can upend someone else’s life, too—including people who never took a test. Copeland brings you into both the detective work and the conversations that follow. Afterwards, you may think differently about giving a DNA kit as a gift.
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The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Triplets seem like a promising foundation for a close-knit family. Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally Oppenheimer would like to register their objections.
Born into a wealthy New York household, the three siblings are eager to escape one another. Their father is increasingly distant; their mother remains invested in the family she wants them to be. When the triplets leave for college, she decides to have a fourth child.
This is a family saga to settle into, with a slow build, sharp humor, and people who have plenty going on that they don’t share with one another. Art, money, status, and private ambitions complicate things further. If you enjoy following separate lives and finding out how they connect, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. And that much younger sibling has quite a family to get acquainted with.
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A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
A wealthy Iowa farmer decides to divide his land among his three daughters. A generous gift, on paper. In practice, the arrangement begins dismantling the family.
Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel reimagines King Lear through the eldest daughter, Ginny, bringing the story into a world of farm work, marriages, neighboring landowners, and deeply entrenched paternal authority. But don’t worry, you don’t need to know Shakespeare to follow and appreciate it.
As Ginny’s understanding of her family changes, the story grows darker, changing the familiar story of a father wronged by his daughters into something far more troubling.
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Francie Nolan is a reader. That’s already a point in her favor.
Growing up in an early-twentieth-century Brooklyn tenement, she finds possibility in books while her family struggles to make ends meet. Her father is loving and unreliable, her mother works relentlessly, and the extended family contributes its share of complications—including Aunt Sissy’s unconventional romantic history.
First published in 1943, Betty Smith’s novel builds a whole neighborhood around Francie: small purchases, school humiliations, scraps collected for pennies, and moments of pleasure that matter because so little comes easily. If you remember the book as an assigned classic from your school years, we highly recommend returning to it as an adult—and paying fresh attention to the adults Francie is trying to understand.
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Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Don and Mimi Galvin raised 12 children in Colorado. Six of their 10 sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family tells the family’s story alongside the scientific effort to understand the illness. The Galvins became important to researchers studying its genetic origins, while inside the household, each person was living with consequences no research finding could immediately resolve.
You follow the researchers’ search for answers while getting to know the people whose lives depend on them. It is harrowing at times: there’s abuse and violence in this household, and children whose own needs are overshadowed by their siblings’ crises. The medical history is startling in its own right, especially the theories that once placed the blame for schizophrenia on mothers.
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Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Eleanor Bennett leaves her estranged children a recording and a Caribbean black cake. The cake is familiar. The life she describes in the recording is not.
As Byron and Benny listen, their mother’s story takes them into a past involving an island childhood, a young swimmer, and a flight under suspicion of murder. The novel moves across decades and countries, assembling a history neither sibling knew they had.
There’s plenty of intrigue, along with food, the sea, and family traditions that make you want to linger in the places Eleanor describes. And while you’re piecing together her past, Byron and Benny also have their own falling-out to navigate. The good news is their mother left them a lot to take in—and a reason to keep talking.
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The Family Man by Elinor Lipman
Henry Archer’s orderly Manhattan life gets decidedly less orderly when he reconnects with Thalia, the stepdaughter he hasn’t seen in years.
Henry is a successful lawyer; Thalia is an aspiring actress with an unusual job pretending to be an actor’s girlfriend. Soon she’s living in his townhouse, his ex-wife is back in the conversation, and his own romantic prospects are improving. Everyone has something to say about everyone else’s business.
If you like funny people talking their way into—and sometimes out of—awkward situations, this book is really good company. There’s romantic maneuvering, an ex-wife who’s difficult to ignore, and a man who turns out to have room in his life for all of it. And Henry’s second chance at being a father gives you someone worth cheering for.
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In the mood for more good books? Browse our 15 books to snap out of a reading rut blog for out-of-the-ordinary reading inspiration. Or, if your shelves are starting to feel like a family argument of their own, check out our ideas for organizing your bookshelves.