The Coast of Akron

Adrienne Miller comes from the Wes Anderson school of storytelling, complete withpoignantly madcap quirks and touchingly realistic family dynamics from none-too-realistic families. But the more appropriate comparison for Akron—Miller's first novel—might be Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Like that National Book Award winner, Akron features a contemporary Midwestern family spiraling out of control, with only a climactic party to save it.

The novel traces the history of the artistically inclined Haven family of Akron, Ohio. Lowell is the scion, a well-known painter who has made his career on elaborate self-portraits, and who has all the self-absorption of someone who makes his living from crafting his own image. Fergus is his flamingly chatty and insanely wealthy live-in lover, and he was also the childhood confidante of Lowell's estranged wife, Jenny. Fergus serves as the narrator for much of the book, and he is simultaneously as witty and annoying as an unbalanced Oscar Wilde. In the words of P.J. O'Rourke, he's"endearritating." Lowell and Jenny's daughter, Merit, is falling out of love with her geeky, zanily autistic husband, while also grappling with life in the shadow of a famous and distant father.

Akron is saturated with eccentricities, sometimes too much so. Fergus, in particular, can be a maddening companion. But to Miller's credit, she manages to allow her characters to behave and interact like normal human beings despite their bizarre environment. Miller, the literary editor for Esquire, displays a heartfelt love for—tempered by an ironic distance from—her characters. This not only humanizes their more frustrating tendencies, but lays the groundwork for Miller's great achievement in the book—an ambitious, hallucinatory party scene, a futile revelry that descends into brute chaos.—Whet Moser