 First edition | |
| Author | Bill Clegg |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Gallery/Scout Press |
Publication date | September 2015 |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9781476798172 |
| 813/.6 | |
Did You Ever Have a Family is the debut novel by American literary agent and author Bill Clegg, published in 2015.
The novel focuses on June Reid, a beautiful, rich Connecticut woman. On the night before her daughter's wedding, June Reid loses her daughter, her daughter's fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend in a tragic house fire. Grief-stricken, she drives across the country to Washington. Over the course of her journey, details slowly emerge about what caused the fire and its impact on the community.
Did You Ever Have a Family received favourable reviews from, amongst others, The New York Times , the Financial Times , The Guardian and The Independent . [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
In The New York Times , Kaui Hart Hemmings called the novel "masterly" and "thoughtful", noting that it is the characters' "complicated pasts... far more than the immediate concerns of the present or the obvious burdens of grief" and "connection — the way people and their lives fuse" that Clegg is interested in exploring. [7]
In the Financial Times , Suzi Feay noted that Clegg has "an eye for characters who cannot easily fit into the boxes that society has assigned" even if the main protagonist "June remains a puzzle, and hazily unconvincing". While praising Clegg for his ability to "not fall into the obvious trap of giving regular characters bigger vocabularies and more elaborate syntax than they would typically use", she also criticised his writing for being "generally plain and even unambitious", with the cast of characters' voices "not hugely differentiated". [8]
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. The story was serialised in Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round. Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage in 1877.
Family Affair is an American sitcom starring Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot that aired on CBS from September 12, 1966, to March 4, 1971. The series explored the trials of well-to-do engineer and bachelor Bill Davis (Keith) as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his luxury New York City apartment. Davis' traditional English gentleman's gentleman, Mr. Giles French (Cabot), also had adjustments to make as he became saddled with the responsibility of caring for 15-year-old Cissy and the six-year-old twins, Jody and Buffy.
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Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg is a British media executive and former politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015 and as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 to 2017. An "Orange Book" liberal, he has been associated with both socially liberal and economically liberal policies. In 2018, Clegg became vice‑president of global affairs and communications at Facebook Inc, before being promoted in 2022 to president for global affairs.
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Bill Clegg is an American literary agent and author. Clegg's first two memoirs detail his addiction to crack cocaine. His debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, received offers from four publishers and was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
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