Published by Scribner on January 10, 2017
The Antiques follows the tradition of stories about dysfunctional families — in this case, the Westfalls. A parent gets sick or dies and siblings, very different from each other, all return home to deal with family issues, giving them a chance to decide whether they like each other and/or their parents. The tradition can be milked for comedy or drama or both. The Antiques isn’t deep, but it made me laugh.
Upscale antique dealers George and Ana are doing well, except that George has inoperable cancer and not much time left. A storm has descended on Hudson, New York, furnishing the setting for the story. Ana thinks it is rude of George to require a trip to Intensive Care during the storm, but she firmly believes that commitments should be kept and marriages endured, no matter how miserable they might be.
The Westfalls’ three children don’t share the same view of commitment. Josef is the most financially successful of the three, although that’s collapsing, as did his marriage. Both of those problems are related to the money he is spending on his most recent girlfriend.
Charlie is supposed to be doing publicity for entertainers in California, but she mostly runs errands for her celebrity clients when she isn’t chauffeuring their children. Her current client is Melody, an actress whose strange son Dustin is the product of a brief marriage to an actor. Charlie’s own child, Abbott, has a variety of behavioral problems and is about to be kicked out of school. Charlie’s husband Rey is sure that Abbott will grow out of it, but Charlie seems to be prepared to grow out of her marriage and into a state of freedom, given her suspicions (based on unfamiliar panties in her underwear drawer) that Rey is cheating on her.
Armie lives in George’s and Anna’s basement, having lost his job — the one that Josef got him — when his employer was raided by the FBI. Unlike Josef, Arnie is awkward around women, particularly a former high school classmate who is now flirting with him. Armie resents Josef, who thinks of Armie as a loser.
None of this sounds funny, but I don’t want to spoil the laughs. Each character has a weakness that is exploited for its comic potential — Armie’s stifling insecurity, Charlie’s pill dependence, Josef’s infidelity, Melody’s self-indulgence — and for various reasons, they’re all in fear of being arrested well before the novel ends.
None of the characters are irredeemably despicable (although Josef comes close), but the only character for whom I had great sympathy was Ana’s dog Shadow, by far the most sensible member of the family. Some of the characters (particularly philandering Josef) are little more than stereotypes, but they’re stereotypes who say funny things in his dialog-heavy novel.
Elements of romantic comedy near the end are a little too obvious and the story as a whole is a little too predictable — it feels like a story I’ve read a few times before — but it made me laugh at unexpected moments. This is a light story, too familiar to be surprising, but the humor works well enough to make The Antiques worthwhile for a reader who needs a mood-lightening day.
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