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SUSANNA FOGEL reads from her debut novel NUCLEAR FAMILY

Nuclear Family (Henry Holt and Company)

“Your Grandma Rose Has Some Questions about Your Interracial Relationship”

So starts one of the letters in the dynamic debut novel Nuclear Family: A Tragicomic Novel in Letters by filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Susanna Fogel about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents. Told entirely in letters to Julie, a heroine we never meet, we get to know her and her increasingly unique family through their check-ins: their thank-you notes, letters of condolence, family gossip, and good old-fashioned familial passive-aggression.

Together, their missives – some sardonic, others absurd, others heartbreaking – weave a tapestry of a very modern family trying (and often failing) to show one another they care. Julie’s particular nuclear family - her technologically helpless mother, wayward adopted sister, haiku writing father and his new family, and so on, are not the only ones chiming in. Julie’s inbox also fills up with messages from her overworked cellphone (which is ready to call it quits on their ‘unhealthy relationship’), her intra-uterine device, and her late gerbil of the 90s who met an accidental and untimely death thanks to Julie’s neglect.

With refreshing droll wit Fogel draws out the eyebrow-raising, cringe-worthy type of drama and comedy that only families are able to produce.

Praise for Nuclear Family

“This brilliant patchwork portrait of a modern family dynamic puzzled together through disparate, often passive-aggressive messaging rings heart-achingly true in our age of family diplomacy by text and email. Fortunately for us it’s also hilarious." —Nick Offerman

“Sharp, funny and painful. Just like your actual family.” —Simon Rich

“Fogel’s novel offers plenty of glimpses—both humorous and endearing—into the life of a single woman with a well-meaning, if clueless, family.” —Publishers Weekly

Susanna Fogel is a Rhode Island native and apologist. She writes and directs films and television, including the film Life Partners and the ABC drama series Chasing Life. She is an alumna of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and Time magazine. She lives in New York and Los Angeles. And she has bangs, obviously. Nuclear Family is Susanna's first novel.

Photo by Zach Winnick

Event date: 
Thursday, January 11, 2018 - 7:30pm
Event address: 
1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Nuclear Family: A Tragicomic Novel in Letters By Susanna Fogel Cover Image
$19.00
ISBN: 9781250165237
Availability: Not in Stock. Available to Order.
Published: Holt Paperbacks - July 18th, 2017