Hi! I’m looking for new book recs. I’m looking for books about dysfunctional families or life isn’t going the way the main character wants. Something like This Is Where I Leave you. Bonus if it has overbearing parents or parents struggling with addiction. Preferably something funny, but it doesnt have to be. Thank you!
Job
The Death of Bunny Munro
Appearantly they are doing a tv series based on the book now.
I haven’t read This is Where I Leave, so don’t know how similar it is, but I really liked Demon Copperhead & it fits your criteria - trials and hardship but with some humor.
I was surprised how heart wrenching Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was. Growing up I heard it was about meatpacking plants in Chicago. Technically correct, but very much a tale of things not going well. Enjoyed the journey despite the sadness!
Once Were Warriors
Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff’s harrowing vision of his country’s indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.
Dysfunction, alcoholism, domestic violence.
But it’s not funny, sorry OP.
I read these books as a kid: A series of unfortunate events
Count Olaf: “Going my way?”
Take a look at the works of David Sedaris. Those fit the description, and are funny.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Like Wind Against Rock by Nancy Kim
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis
Sisters One, Two, Three by Nancy Star
Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand
Maybe something like The glass castle from Jeannette Walls.
Probably a little different than what you’re describing but I’m reading blood meridian right now and it’s very good. It’s about a 14-year-old runaway in 1850s America where everything is fucked. He gets in increasingly desperate and violent situations to try and survive
So old and not really funny, but with a lot of “life not going the way they wanted”:
The children of Torremolinos - James Michener
https://diebuchsuche.de/buch-9783570041895.html
(German ISBN ISBN: 3570041891)
I read this as a teenager and I haven’t forgotten about it since. Generational conflict, addiction, lots of other emotional topics - I guess it fits perfectly for modern times as well
My journal
Catch 22
Great Expectations
