Vivienne and Patrick Fisher have done an excellent job raising their three daughters, Alex, Nancy, and Eva. They're well-adjusted women with impressive careers, caring partners, exciting hobbies, and sweet children. So it's with great anticipation that three generations of Fishers gather at a beautiful glass house in the English countryside for a weeklong celebration of Vivienne's seventieth birthday. But when Patrick's reaction to a freak accident on the first day of the trip inadvertently reveals that he has a favorite daughter, no one is prepared for the shockwaves it sends through the family. Decades-old unresolved sibling rivalries are suddenly unmasked. And be it newly uncovered smoking habits, ancient crushes, or private doubts about life decisions both big and small, no one's secrets are safe. Still-tender wounds are reopened amid an audience of friends, husbands, grandchildren, and even coworkers, and as the family's past is re-written, they find themselves suddenly unmoored.
A kaleidoscopic depiction of this vacation week, pinging between moments from each day and the sisters’ pivotal childhood memories as tensions and irritations mount ... The Accidental Favorite doesn’t contain chapters, only names and times (Alex, autumn 1975; Eva, Sunday noon) as guides. This back-and-forth between time periods can sometimes be disorienting, but the novel excels in revealing the complicated tangle of sisterly love and resentment; the way siblings can remember the same event quite clearly, but also distinctly from one another; and how children internalize events that they don’t understand ... The Accidental Favorite covers some of the same territory as Tessa Hadley (particularly The Past), with similar attention to the characters’ surroundings—the stylish but uncomfortable vacation house, the cluttered old family home—though with more wryly comic moments. Fran Littlewood puts the sisters and their parents through their paces: fractured family dynamics, emotional breakdowns, a few explosive fights and a near natural disaster. Through it all, the sisterly and parental bonds endure.
A compelling drama about a dysfunctional family that will make readers laugh out loud and cringe all at once. While the side plots meander slightly, Littlewood’s sharp characters and emotional depth beautifully capture the messy and complicated side of adults’ relationships to their families of origin, quirks and all.
Littlewood again has her finger on the pulse of the woman on the edge, balancing an impressive cast of characters and flashbacks to the girls’ upbringing, slowly revealing the sources of the familial tension. As the house fills with a mysterious odor (it’s a metaphor), readers will gladly go along on this wild ride.
