Book review: Gender and family dynamics

Themes of queer parenting, gender identity, parasocial relationships and intense friendships are treated with accomplished care in 'Like Family'

Erin White is an undeniable talent and a canny observer of the everyday: 'The great, gorgeous mess of being a human.'

• Like Family 
• Erin White 
• Serpent’s Tail, £14.99 

“Now here she was, nestled between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, and she felt — and this feeling still surprised her, every day — held in place by the landscape, comforted by its edges, the containment of its geological borders.’

Caroline, one of the central characters of Like Family, puzzles over the appeal of her adopted home of Radclyffe (perhaps a nod to the author of The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall), a fictional small town which serves as the ideal playground on which to explore the friendships and dynamics of three middle-aged, relatively privileged couples — two of which are queer, one straight.

Their upstate New York lives revolve around volunteering at jumble sales, attending themed local festivals, doting over their all-consuming young children, and overthinking their thoughts and interactions.

The small irritations of coupling are skilfully rendered — Caroline observes her husband Mike when he comes out of the bathroom: 

“On his chin there was a small bit of the charcoal toothpaste he’d recently started using that was slowly staining their sink gray.”

Themes of queer parenting, gender identity, parasocial relationships and intense friendships are treated with accomplished care, as are family dynamics: “…Ruth saw how the three children were a little pack… She began to see siblings as a seawall against the ocean of life’s hardships…”

Ruth is Caroline’s best friend, although their connection is tested when it’s revealed that Ruth and her wife Wyn have been keeping a secret from the group.

The third couple in the fold are Evie and her wife Tobi, who run a wildly successful pottery business and are connected to the gang by blood as well as friendship — Tobi is Mike’s cousin, though he considers her more like a sister.

Evie and Tobi are, according to Caroline: “…the platonic ideal of lesbians, the sort of couple The New York Times and straight women who didn’t know how to make their husbands do more housework liked to trot out as proof that it’s much easier for queer couples to achieve domestic equality”.

But even with Evie’s perfectly planned schedules, Tobi and her wife face difficulties synchronising: “Was this what marriage was, Tobi wondered? Just one long run of not getting the timing right?”

Such witty observations are threaded throughout, as well as careful character studies: “Caroline had a habit of borrowing future loneliness.”

The list of double-barrelled characters provided at the beginning of this fiction debut acts as a preamble for the somewhat pedantic atmosphere that clouds the first two thirds of the book — for the most part White writes with the assurance of a polished, seasoned novelist, but her light touch is weighed down by long passages of sometimes superfluous backstory, which detract from her otherwise incredibly fine writing.

Of the secret she has been keeping, Ruth says: “I just wanted to make sure you knew” and this encapsulates White’s approach — we are told things we don’t necessarily need to know, fed information that perhaps would have been better gleaned through present-day action.

It is difficult to categorise White’s writing, which is what is fascinating about it — the family secret played up on the cover is secondary to the psychology of the interpersonal relationships and the cast of characters ensures a wide appeal.

I can see the novel providing endless opportunities for book club discussion. 

In its final third, Like Family seems to ditch its training wheels and allow itself to take off, which bodes well for future offerings from White, who is an undeniable talent and a canny observer of the everyday: “The great, gorgeous mess of being a human.”