Louisa Hall's The Carriage House
This is one of those great mildly-dysfunctional family stories whose plots sounds overly convoluted when trying to explain it in a blog post, but which actually works really well. There's patriarch William Adair, obsessively proud of his three daughters, and fighting to restore the titular carriage house built by his grandfather--at least until he has a stroke; his childhood love and neighbor, Adelia, who's inserted herself into the family in the wake of his wife's diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's; her caretaker, Louise, who is a weak character in several senses of the word (though also seems to be a stand-in for the author?); and finally, the three daughters--Elizabeth, former actress and recent divorcee, Diana, a failed tennis player and architect, and troubled Isabelle, whose motivations made little sense to me. Some of these are clearly stronger than others, but for the most part, the story of a momentous summer in their lives is a compelling one. The wrap-up veers a bit toward women's fiction category, but that just means I can recommend it to my mom. :) B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in March.
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