Family Values: A Novel

By Lawrence David

The Wallaces seem the perfect family--successful father, beautiful mother, five handsome children--but beneath the storybook exterior lurks a legacy of anger and resentment. A first novel. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671732153
• ISBN13: 9780671732158
• Release Date: July 1993
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A piece of life

Lawrence David's outstanding first novel is a delicious piece of work which depicts the main events in the Wallaces' family life (it could be YOUR OWN family life) through the 70's and 80's. One of those thousands of families whose parents still wanted to keep loyal to the picture of the true American Family while their children had already inherited the 60's winds of change. In David's detailed, present-tensed, minimalistic writing, the reader is allowed to watch through a keyhole the Wallaces' struggling with incidents year by year, and above all, the mother's interior doubts, those who affected so many other women of the 70's who decided that being "a homemaker" just wasn't good enough anymore. Sandy Wallace is one of the best female characters I've read in a long time. David's second novel (Need) is equally recommendable, and I'm eagerly awaiting his third one. For the time being, Family Values is a magnificent read, especially for those who have been, are or aspire to become parents.