A Family Failing Author:Honor Arundel The Douglases are an intelligent, affectionate happy family until the father, Jonathon, loses his job as a newspaper features editor after a corporate takeover. His pride and self-confidence are undermined, and this affects not only him, but all the members of his family - his wife, Elspeth and his children Mark and Joanna. — Elspeth, who is als... more »o a journalist, gets a chance to appear on a TV talk show. Her success solves their financial problems but puts an added strain on her relationship with Jonathon. He feels, as he says, "half a man" when he is not working.
Mark throws up his university studyt to live in a commune in the country.
Joanna suffers most, as she loves both her parents and feels it is impossible to take sides. Sometimes she thinks her mother is to blame for being cocky and insensitive and not putting her marriage first. At other times, she feels her father is to blame for being unjust and contemptuous of Elspeth's work. She desperately wants the family to stay together and only slowly and painfully learns that she has to make a life of her own, that being the daughter of the family is not enough.
Joanna, who wants to be a writer, tries to find the answers to her families problems by writing about them. In this realistic and biting first-person novel, which is as modern as tomorrow, she describes with ruthless honesty her own reactions to a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly familiar to many families.« less