NEWLY RELEASE BOOKS
by Amy Virshup
Published: New York Times, April 14, 2010

Is there any richer ore for writers than the family? A number of this month’s newly published books mine that vein, whether it’s looking at the current variety (you know, a recovering alcoholic mom, her child from her first marriage, plus a stepdad) or more traditional forms from the past (a Tommy-gun toting gangster and his moll, undone by her love for grandma). Ah, the ties that bind.

THIS IS JUST EXACTLY LIKE YOU
By Drew Perry
320 pages. Viking. $25.95

Jack Lang has trouble planning ahead, which is how, at the start of this book, he has ended up as the owner of two houses (he impulsively put up his hand when a ranch across the street from his own was being auctioned), one of which is filled with unfinished projects: a kitchen floor half-tiled, a plywood wall where a breakfast nook was supposed to go, a half-insulated attic. Another thing that Jack hasn’t quite finished is his dissertation, which is part of the reason he’s running a mulch-and-garden center instead of teaching at the local college, like his wife Beth. Beth, meanwhile, has left him and their autistic son Hendrick to move in with Jack’s closest friend. In the course of the book all three of them confront the things that you can control — and those you can’t — and start to figure out what to do about them.

IMPERFECT BIRDS
By Anne Lamott
278 pages. Riverhead Books. $25.95

When Elizabeth Ferguson finds Valium pills in her daughter Rosie’s jeans, Rosie has a classic explanation — they belong to a friend. “I got all A’s last term,” Rosie reminds her mother. “I’m holding down two jobs. I’m a good kid, Mom,” That’s all true, but so is the fact that Rosie is being drawn into a world of drugs and sex, one that her mother, Elizabeth, and her stepfather, James, prefer not to see. And besides, both of them have demons of their own to contend with, including Elizabeth’s alcoholism and depression. In the end, the whole family is forced to confront what’s really happening. The book continues a family tale begun in Anne Lamott’s 1983 novel, “Rosie.” Ms. Lamott is best known for her collections of spiritually inflected essays.

INFAMOUS
By Ace Atkins
406 pages. Putnam. $25.95

In his latest crime novel Ace Atkins takes on the real-life tale of George Kelly, better known as Machine Gun, and his wife, Kathryn, who in 1933 kidnapped a rich Oklahoma oil man by the name of Charles Urschel, setting off a major manhunt by what would become the F.B.I. Mr. Atkins based his tale in part on a file discovered by a Memphis criminal court clerk. In Mr. Atkins’s hands Mr. Kelly is a bit of a sap, done in by the overweening ambitions of his wife. Kathryn, on the other hand, is the kind of woman who, in suggesting that her husband kill a police officer, says things like: “George, be a gangster. Really.”
More at NYT.