Complex and realistic family dynamics take center stage in Tracey Lange’s We Are the Brennans: A Novel (Celadon Books). In an era when fictional families are almost always tiny — when authors seem wary of giving much airtime to more than a couple of characters — it’s refreshing to see a writer willing to take on a thoroughly enmeshed, semi-dysfunctional clan and give nearly all of them a voice and an arc.
Sunday Brennan was named after Sunday’s child in the nursery rhyme, the one who is “bonny and blithe;” her life has been anything but, at least since she suddenly left home five years ago. After she is seriously injured in a drunk-driving incident, her beloved brother Denny flies from New York to L.A. to bring her back home. Denny is shocked at the life she’s been living in L.A.: a tiny apartment, no real friends, waitressing instead of the writing career she’d supposedly left home for. He can’t understand why she left her close-knit family — and worse, her fiancé — for this.
SUNDAY’S SECRETS DON’T CORNER THE MARKET
But Sunday is not the only one in this big, rambunctious Irish family that is harboring a secret. Denny has his own secrets, and his failure to communicate is straining his marriage to the feisty Theresa, who has always had his back. She has moved out while Denny keeps trying to cover his tracks, unable to admit that he is overextended financially. He takes out a sketchy loan to make ends meet, but meanwhile, mysterious things keep happening at the new bar and restaurant he is trying to open.
Mickey, the aging patriarch of the family, is facing health problems and memory lapses. But there are some things he remembers all too well, and while he thinks the past is buried, the truth will surface in complicated ways. His secrets have already harmed his family more than he knows and the repercussions continue.
Artistic Jackie, the brother everyone has written off as a dreamy slacker, is the keeper of some of these secrets, but not all. On probation after a run-in with the law, he is slowly putting his life back together and learning that he can change his role in the family. That means he will have to confront some of the siblings he has always loved and trusted.
Kale, Denny’s best friend and business partner but also Sunday’s ex-fiancé, was virtually adopted by the Brennans when he was a lonely kid. His loyalty to them is unwavering, but their loyalty to him is not always so clear. He’s moved on with a new marriage and a child he adores, but Sunday’s return opens a lot of old wounds and gives rise to new questions.
WE’RE ALL, AND WE’RE ONLY, HUMAN
Lange employs a shifting point of view in each chapter of her debut novel, giving every character a chance to share their side of the story. No one is a deep-dyed villain, but no one is a saint, either. Characters emerge as three-dimensional people, mostly sympathetic even while making questionable choices and bad decisions. While there are some suspenseful elements, We Are the Brennans falls mainly into the domestic drama category, with tensions arising more from frictions in relationships than external elements. Fans of Anne Tyler or Claire Lombardo (The Most Fun We Ever Had) take note.
https://booktrib.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Tracey-Lange-Credit-Natalie-Stephenson-1.jpeg
About Tracey Lange:
Born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan, Tracey Lange comes from a large Irish family with a few secrets of its own. She headed west and graduated from the University of New Mexico before owning and operating a behavioral healthcare company with her husband for fifteen years. While writing her debut novel, We Are the Brennans, she completed the Stanford University online novel writing program. Tracey currently lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, two sons and their German Shepherd.
