A Friend of the Family is in today’s New York Times, in the “Newly Released Books” column along with Penelope Lively, Ha Jin, and Paul Auster, among others.

The New York Times wrote:

A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY
By Lauren Grodstein
302 pages. Algonquin. $23.95.

Until recently, Pete Dizinoff was a successful doctor living with his wife, Elaine, and son, Alec, in a wealthy New Jersey suburb, surrounded by friends like Joe and Iris Stern. But at the start of Lauren Grodstein’s new novel that life has unraveled. Estranged from his family and facing a malpractice suit, Pete is living above the garage at his former house, contemplating the ruins. The garage apartment had been Alec’s art studio after he dropped out of Hampshire. (“Sixty thousand dollars vanished — puff — like smoke; our son fails out of a college that doesn’t even give grades,” Pete laments.) The story pivots around the Sterns’ daughter, Laura, who as a teenager committed a terrible act, which, 15 years later, hangs over all these tangled relationships.