A Review of Steve Amsterdam's What the Family Needed
I enjoyed Steve Amsterdam’s award winning apocalyptic, climate change novel Things We Didn’t See Coming , so I was quick to purchase a copy of What the Family Needed . Calling Things We Didn’t See Coming a novel might be bit of a misnomer as it is a collection of short novellas. But they all feature the same character and are told in chronological order. Amsterdam uses the same technique with What the Family Needed , but this time each story is told from the viewpoint of a different character. What the Family Needed begins with teenagers Giordana and Ben arriving at their Aunty Natalie’s house with their mother Ruth. Once again their mother has deserted her husband. Giordana is looking forward to the normalcy of her Aunts family’s stable life, but she has not factored in the fantasies of their son Alek. Gordiana feels her mother does not care about her opinion of her father, and that she is taken for granted by her mother. It’s like she is invisible. While ...