Upstate

James Wood Jonathan Cape €18.51

When London record executive Helen, who grew up in the north of England, receives an email hinting that her sister is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she heads for snowbound upstate New York, where Vanessa teaches philosophy. Along for the ride comes their father, whose perspective as a man of another generation augments this searching, if low-key, family drama. Its energy derives from feted critic Wood’s observational chops, and you can expect muscular descriptions – how about the ‘big easy loiter’ of an American train horn? – and modest, deeply humane revelations, as when Helen clocks that she’s reached that point in her life when she wants both her children and her father to stop ageing. Polished, poignant and often very funny.