Family Tree Stories about the family

Do not let the sub-title arouse expectations of tales of familial harmony: five out of the ten stories here deal with divorce, and all of them revolve around strife and suffering of one kind or another. Only Anne Fine's hilarious squib about a Scottish miner struggling to come to terms with his son's prowess at needlework is anything like a sunny read. All of the stories are skilfully, even powerfully, written: Helen Dunmore's WWI story about a child trying to-rebuild a cricket team after the youth of his village have been slaughtered in the trenches is particularly moving. Most of the stories provide a sense of reassuring closure following episodes of anguish: Anthony Masters' 'We've Got You For Life', about an insecure adolescent's desire to punish his adoptive parents, ends with an acceptance of the kind of benign bondage that families can supply; Jacqueline Wilson's 'Just Like Your Father's describes how a boy's fear of inheriting his lost father's nastiness is assuaged by his casual observation of another father and son playing together. Only Melvin Burgess, in the final story about a boy using his knowledge of his mother's affair as a source of destructive power, strikes a (more realistic?) bleak note. This is not comfortable reading, but it is thought provoking and compassionate. It is probably a good idea to read the stories yourself first and judge their suitability for particular readers.