girl in greenwood

The Family Tree
by Carole Cadwalladr

I think I spotted this book on some kind of bestseller list, and subsequently put it on hold at the library. I'm often disappointed when I read bestsellers - I'm looking at you, Da Vinci Code - but this was a nice surprise.

Rebecca Monroe is a pop culture researcher married to a geneticist. They're debating whether or not to have a child, which inspires Rebecca to take a closer look at her family history. She has a lot of material to examine - her mother committed suicide when Rebecca was little, and her grandmother and grandfather are first cousins. Rebecca wants to come down on the "nuture" side of the nature vs. nuture debate, especially since her husband is completely certain that everything is determined by genetics.

I enjoyed the story of the novel, but what I liked better than the story was the structure. Each chapter has some strange insert, like an annotated family tree or a blip from Rebecca's research about pop culture in Britain. I read this book all in one evening because I was so sucked in by the mysteries in Rebecca's family, and by the odd little additions to the story.

Labels: book reports