Reviewed By Gillian, Mona Vale

Californian born Stephen Newman goes to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar having worked his passage as an errand runner on a luxury ship. He did this to appease his hard working immigrant dad who thought it was better to cash out the fare provided by the scholarship fund than to fritter it away unnecessarily. At Oxford Stephen soon finds he can make good use of the lab facilities in manufacturing acid tablets for onselling to other students for whom, as it is the 60s, drug experimentation is de rigueur. He loses his scholarship and leaves the university, bright but unqualified. He has formed a new circle of English friends and among them is his future wife Andrea. Their marriage, undertaken lightly, proves to be enduring. They have children, develop careers as they move from hippie squat, to bedsit, to home ownership to comfortable mid-life. Their children grow up, their parents and friends age and for the whole cast there is love, sadness, loss, joy and opportunity as life unfurls in it normal messy complexity.

I enjoyed this book. It is well written, the characters are well developed and the period strongly evoked.  It is interesting to consider it alongside the other recent family epic, Franzen's Freedom.  That book dazzles with its audacity while Linda Grant's book compels more quietly and insistently. For a trio of fantastic books about families, and if you dare, throw in Christina Stead's  The Man Who Loved Children, in its new edition it is introduced by Jonathan Franzen who considers it a masterpiece.