Rating: 
Summary: A Page Turner
Review: Family History kept me turning pages to find out what turn of events brought them to where they are when the novel opens. I enjoyed being thrown into the middle of the story at the beginning of the book. Ned and Rachel are already apart. Katie is 'away' and Rachel is questioning Joshie's possible developmental delays. An excellent read and one that is prompting me to obtain other books by this author.
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Summary: Incredible -- Impossible to put down. Inspiring.
Review: From the first page to the last, this book gripped my heart and my soul. Immersed in Family History, I turned each page wanting to know what happened to this family and why. I read the book in (almost) one sitting and when I finished, I wanted more. In today's cluttered world, I rarely find a book that creates such a strong emotional response. I wish everyone would read this book and truly appreciate life, which can change without a moments notice. Family History takes the reader through the pain of a family and affirms the true essence of hope. I loved it and have already bought two copies as gifts. Highly acclaimed and successful novelist Dani Shapiro is an excellent writer. I only wish the sequel to Family History existed .
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Summary: A Very Fast Read!
Review: How could a family and a marriage fall apart after so many happy years? Rachel Jensen finds out in Dani Shapiro's novel FAMILY HISTORY, the story of her family and how they deal with a child that shows signs of mental illness. The book opens with Rachel sitting in her house alone, watching home movies taken by her husband Ned. She stares at the movie screen and sees herself and her family, yet she does not recognize them. The happy smiles and laughter that she is watching is from a lifetime ago. She still has not adjusted to her new life without her husband or her daughter Kate. The smiles and laughter are only memories. The only remnant of her family is her young son Joshua, who lives with her in this house. He is far too young to really understand how bad things are for his parents and he does not know that he has a sister named Kate. For most of Joshua's life, Kate has not lived with the family. Rachel goes downstairs to check her phone messages and listens to one that asks her to go to Stone Mountain in regards to Kate. Whatever the news is, Rachel is dreading to hear it. There could be no good news if they are calling her about Kate. How did things get to this point? The bulk of the story is told in flashbacks. As the story line slowly progresses and the appointment at Stone Mountain approaches, the reader learns about Ned and Rachel's courtship and their romantic dreams of being artists before their children were even a glimmer in their eyes. The two of them lived in New York and, while trying to make their artistic dreams come true, Rachel learns she is pregnant. With the help of Ned's parents, who also happen to be very wealthy, they buy a fixer-upper near his parents' home in Massachusetts. It's away from the big city and closer to her in-laws, who could help them out as the two of them try to make a new life for their new family. Rachel sees this move as a big change --- along with her pregnancy --- and it becomes one of the pivotal points in their lives. We learn about Kate, who had shown much promise of a bright future. We learn about the event that ultimately sends Kate away from her family, because she is too unstable to be cared for at home by her parents. Neither Ned nor Rachel saw the signs that led to this event. They did not see the signs that would have told them that Kate would start to go through a transformation, from happy-go-lucky preteen to sullen and moody teenager. Close friends said it was just a phase all girls go through and Rachel believed it for a while. Then things started to get worse. They did not predict the unexplainable tantrums and mood swings Kate would begin to experience: her foul language at home, shoplifting incidences and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Again, this all could have been a phase that Kate was going through. No one would have believed that things would get so bad that Kate would have the power to break apart and destroy their family and nearly ruin a marriage and a love that should have lasted throughout the years. Ned and Rachel are united in their love and care for Kate, but when Kate reveals the ultimate accusation at her father, their lives are torn apart. FAMILY HISTORY sounds like a complex psychological drama built around a family that is falling apart. Part of the story is just that, but there are other layers to this book. The relationship with mother and daughters is a secondary plot as we compare Rachel's relationship with her own dysfunctional mother to that of her own relationship with Kate. The study of a marriage is another subplot --- how two people who thought they knew each other so well become total strangers overnight. All these factors helped make this a very fast read for me, but overall I enjoyed the way Dani Shapiro writes. She made these characters seem familiar to me; I felt close to all of them, as if I was the friend or family that surrounded them. I finished this book in a record 24 hours. That's how much I enjoyed this book. This reviewer highly recommends FAMILY HISTORY and looks forward to reading Dani Shapiro's other novels. --- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton
Rating:
Summary: Sad, but not hopeless
Review: I don't usually like very sad books, and this is a terribly, terribly sad book. Rachel nearly drowns with the consciousness of her inability to fix her family, with the knowledge that everything went wrong; she is tormented by the thought of her own, emotionally vampiric mother, afraid she may have given Kate bad genes. I think what made this work for me- while other books or stories that are in some ways less pressingly sad throughout completely turn me off- is that this is not a book which denies the power of human beings to reach and comfort one another. Even Kate is not entirely unreachable, and Rachel and Ned are able to at least try. There is progress; there is understanding. At the beginning of the book, Rachel has lost hope and is barely keeping herself alive, and we are invited into her worst moments, but we are also invited into the moments at which hope begins to return. There are no easy solutions- for Kate, for Josh, for the marriage- but neither is there a sense of hopeless, of complete isolation.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Book
Review: I enjoyed this book from the minute I picked it up to the second I put it down. I read it in one sitting on a perfectly lazy Sunday afternoon. The way Shapiro writes is so completely engrossing you can't wait to get to the next page. I was truly sad when it ended and ran out to buy the rest of her books!
Rating: 
Summary: Oh just get on with it!
Review: I found this book stultifying and predictable. Mostly I just wanted the narrator, Rachel, to just tell the darn story and get it going so I could understand what she was belly-aching about. Also I found it difficult to imagine that she actually believed that everyone else had a perfect family and hers was the only one facing pain and difficulty. No wonder her daughter was having such a hard time! It's hard to imagine any educated, sensitive American having so little insight into her own feelings and so little empathy with her daughter. Also I believed that the ending was very rushed and didn't flow from the rest of the information given in the book. It seemed almost as if the author realized that she had a deadline and needed to conclude the story really quickly. Lastly, wouldn't the book have been interesting if she had discovered hubby's paintings and they were really, really bad? The fact that they are mature, sensitive and display terrific talent just added to the predictability of the plot. If you think about it, this book is really very, very similar in overall plot elements, relationships and pacing to Jane Hamilton's "Map of the World."
Rating:
Summary: Deserves all the praise
Review: I had trouble starting this book. The opening builds slowly, but you know from the outset that it's going to be bad news. I had to set it aside and read more predictable books with guaranteed happy endings, until I hit a period where I had the patience and courage to start this one. The story is told in interlaced layers: how the family came to be, how it fell apart, and went on to suffer irretrievable losses, and how its members slowly start take steps toward survival. I was occasionally impatient with the heroine--she is so sure that everyone disapproves of her that she withdraws into pathetic seclusion--but then, it's a book about imperfect people. Some of the characters are really unhealthy, but most of them are just flawed, and they make their own mistakes, on top of the damage that is done by the ones with serious problems. But they are honest with each other (sometimes when you wish they wouldn't be), and they go on. Perhaps that's the central question at the heart of this story--will they go on? Or even, should they?
Rating: 
Summary: It's not credible
Review: I hate to criticize where others have been so admiring, and I'm not finished with the book, but I am reading in growing amazement. That it received the blurbs it did and the good reviews. Because...it doesn't ring true! I don't believe people act, think, feel, like the author has them do in this novel. Particularly do the notes with the mother, Phyllis, ring false. No mother and daughter relationship is like that! Which leads me to comment on the main character's relationship with her own daughter. She is such a wimp! When they pick the girl up from summer camp, what mother or father would put up with the guff the girl gives them without trying to get to the bottom of the problem? Also, the mother really has a serious lack of spunk. About life in general. If she's seriously depressed, why doesn't she get help. And the way the story is told is rather agravating--it doesn't built organically in suspense, but seems contrived. No, I'm sorry, but I wonder how this one got published when there are so many really talented writers who can't even get agents/editors to read their manuscripts.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully written, true to life
Review: I loved this book. It is a simple, yet poignant story of a family in crisis. It is realistic, sad, but also hopeful. Dani Shapiro is such a gifted writer, and I read this in two days. I could not put Family History down, and read until 3:00a.m I only wish it was longer, and that perhaps she will write a sequel to Family History. Well worth reading!
Rating: 
Summary: A good effort
Review: I read a couple of Ms. Shapiro's prior books and found them to be disappointing (on a certain level I did enjoy the self-indulgent "Slow Motion," because I once worked for a few of "Lenny's" former partners). I was not planning to buy any more, but was taken in by Family History's cover and flap blurbs. Yeah, I judged a book by its cover. I think Family History represents a big step forward from earlier works. The clean prose and the issues being explored -- primarily, but not exclusively, the complications and disruption that difficult children can bring to all aspects of the family's life -- made for a quick and engaging read. In several respects this reminded me of Richard Ford's Pulitzer-winning Independence Day, one of my favorite American novels of the 1990s, except written from the wife's perspective. I had a hard time putting it down and stayed up late to finish it. Ulitmately, however, I have to give this about 3.5 stars. One of the ways I personally gauge a novel is whether it continues to occupy my thoughts after I've finished it. While it was hard to disengage from the book while it was open, it was not hard to put out of mind when it was closed. I'm pretty sure it's not going to make any difference in my real life or my reading life. Perhaps one of the reasons for that is that the characters were not particularly dimensional and did not speak with individual voices. They seemed to be repeating lines, acting out the author's plot, rather than living it. Still, best-seller readability while touching upon issues of substance is something. While I cannot give it an enthusiastic recommendation, I will be interested to check out what Ms. Shapiro writes next.
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