A Family's Journey of Secrets, Reconnection, and Self-Discovery
Sunday Brennan opens up We Are the Brennans with a single-car, drunk-driving accident. Her emergency contact is her older brother Denny, who stops everything to fly from New York to California and gathers Sunday up and brings her back home. Sunday has been gone for five years — having suddenly left her family and fiancé to take a job in LA. She's battered and bruised, and she's more than a little uneasy about trying to find her way back into her life in NY.
As the novel progresses, the secrets Sunday had been keeping come to light and the once tight-knit family bands together again — remembering what it was like when they were whole. On top of her personal reclamation at the proverbial family table, the rest of the bunch has secrets and stories of their own to be revealed.
We Are the Brennans is exactly the light but engrossing family story that knows itself. It doesn't try and be all these other things and confuse the issue. It's straightforward in plot, development, and conclusion — though the ending was a little too neat for me and I felt there were a few ideas or topics left to explore.
But, for a debut novel especially, Lange has created both a wonderful collection of characters and an incredibly real setting. It's easy to tell that Lange pulled from her own life and personal experiences to enrich and enliven this novel with truth and verve.
As the novel progresses, the secrets Sunday had been keeping come to light and the once tight-knit family bands together again — remembering what it was like when they were whole. On top of her personal reclamation at the proverbial family table, the rest of the bunch has secrets and stories of their own to be revealed.
We Are the Brennans is exactly the light but engrossing family story that knows itself. It doesn't try and be all these other things and confuse the issue. It's straightforward in plot, development, and conclusion — though the ending was a little too neat for me and I felt there were a few ideas or topics left to explore.
But, for a debut novel especially, Lange has created both a wonderful collection of characters and an incredibly real setting. It's easy to tell that Lange pulled from her own life and personal experiences to enrich and enliven this novel with truth and verve.