Family

Many of the books I love, such as Carolyn See's "Making a Literary Life" and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's "Italian Days," are as much about their authors as their stated subjects. Ian Frazier's "Family" also is highly personal, yet remarkable in how Frazier presents his memoirs of growing up in Ohio, adds a meticulously researched history of his ancestors, and conflates it all into a profoundly moving meditation on a country, a society and the human condition. "Family" is a book that you'll read from cover to cover without being able to put it down, then pick up often to dip into, savoring favorite parts and the rich, supple excellence of Frazier's prose. Always poignant but never sentimental, "Family" takes us through two hundred years of the lives of various Fraziers, Wickhams, Hurshes, Bachmans and Chapmans--the genealogy that culminated in David and Kate Frazier of Hudson, Ohio, their son Ian, and his four brothers and sisters. Frazier leads us off into far-ranging but fascinating and germane tangents: Discussing a Civil War skirmish in which his great-great-grandfather Charlie Wickham fought, Frazier goes off into the life story of the leader of the opposing forces in that skirmish--Stonewall Jackson. Throughout the book, Frazier shows an unerring eye for the telling detail that throws situations and personalities into dazzling focus. He also makes us love each and every one of the family members, past and present, that he writes about, and moves us to tears with his descriptions of the deaths of his father, his mother, and his young brother Fritz. Here is how Frazier describes his thoughts at his mother's deathbed: "(S)oon all the people who had accompanied me through life would be gone, too, and then even the people who had known us, and no one would remain on earth who had ever seen us, and those descended from us perhaps would know stories about us, perhaps once in a while they would pass by buildings where we had lived and they would mention that we had lived there. And then the stories would fade, and the graves would go untended, and no one would guess what it had been like to wake before dawn in our breath-warmed bedrooms as the radiators clanked and our wives and husbands and children slept." To read "Family" is to gain a fonder, fuller appreciation of our own families, and of all the blessed ties that bind.

I've been thinking about this, and I've decided this is my favorite book, at least my favorite that I have read in the past 5 or 10 years.It's pretty hard to say why, but let me give it a shot: the way his writing conveys his affection for his near family and his ancestors without losing his sense of humour about them. (Ian Frazier started out as a humor writer.) His beautiful descriptions of the countryside he travels through, country you might otherwise think was much worth looking at. His wonderful details about his family history make you feel like everyone's family is important. Since I first read this book, I have developed a true genealogy fixation, trying to recapture the feeling Frazier invokes in this wonderful book. I wish he would write more.

I loved the style of this book. Each paragraph is incredibly packed with meaning and information. This book is history of the most enjoyable kind---the little stories that make up a person's life. Through seeing the patterns of the lives of the author's ancestors, both recent and far distant, we see patterns in history---especially religious history. We also see the history of small towns in the midwest, and of childbearing and rearing, and of education. The most enjoyable part of the book for me was the author's own nuclear family's tale. His parents are complex and very interesting people. I am a fast reader, but this book was impossible to read fast---you really have to slow and listen and enjoy it. Highly, highly recommended.

Ian Frazier's Family is not a book that one reads at a sitting, but it is rather something to be savored over a long read. I have put nearly six months into reading it so far and am not the least bit bothered at my pace. While the book is ostensibly about Mr. Frazier's family, it is safer to say that it is really about the nature of family, particularly the American family. It is also a fascinating history of the country as seen through the lives of this family. Mr. Frazier has spent much time in gathering simply every piece of information that he can possible find about his family. There are more names in this book than one can hope to ever handle. But the tone, the flavor, and the rhythm of this piece make it an irresistable read.

In "Family," Ian Frazier manages a literary coup seldom attempted, much less achieved:the telling of a personal tale with such sensitivity and imagination that the personal is transcended to become, quite possibly, the universal. The story -- of his family's migration, settlement and flourishing in America -- is at once both epic and allegorical. Equal parts history, autobiography, and geneaology, the story takes us from Frazier's family's early haunts in colonial Connecticut (and a host of other places) all the way into the contemporary interior lives of his parents, siblings, and of course, himself. Along the way, we are treated not just to stories of family life, but to grand meditations upon the meanings of history, family, and the ever-longed-for (in our time) "community." A generous book from a brilliant writer ("Great Plains," "Dating Your Mom") and regular "New Yorker"contributor, "Family" is a work of American narrative that should take its place alongside other masterworks such as Alex Haley's "Roots"and Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It"as an offering of passion and insight on the notion of belonging -- to our own families, and to the often fractious and ever elusive "American family." --Bronson Hilliard Boulder, CO May, 1996