AFTER THIS AND The Family Fang, I'm ready to admit Kevin Wilson to the club of Novelists-Whose-Next-Novel-I-Will-Always-Plan-to-Read.
Now, it's true that a novelist's being in that club does not mean I will get around to it right away. I still haven't read that Jennifer Egan novel about the scuba diver although...you know...I plan to. But Wilson now has a track record with me, having written two novels that were smart, funny, moving, and deft at such novelistic tricks as establishing point of view, switching among time frames, and nailing the narrator's voice.
Narrator Lilian's life is at loose ends when she is contacted by old friend Madison, who makes an attractive offer to look after her step kids. Then Wilson fills in some background. Lilian's family was hard up, Madison's wealthy. They were friends in college, both stars on the women's basketball team, but when Madison's illegal drug stash was discovered in their dorm room, Madison's rich dad paid off Lilian's hard-up mom so that Lilian would take the fall. (The payoff is to enable Lilian to continue her education elsewhere, but Lilian's mom ends up spending most of it on herself.) Madison has stayed in touch, sort of, but she is now married to an intensely ambitious politician, so there has been drift. Until now.
Oh, and the step kids? They spontaneously catch fire. Hence the offer.
Amazing premise, no? The development does not disappoint, with witty and insightful dramatization of the challenges of raising children, of navigating class differences, and of the hypocrisy acrobatics of politicians, who have to appear to be normal-family-types while pursuing a career that requires their utter absorption 25 hours a day. (Wilson renders Jasper, Madison's husband, as a character one loves to loathe.) The denouement is utterly satisfying in a Horton Hatches the Egg sort of way.
And a new Wilson is just out, it appears. I'm on it.
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