The Antiques

The Westfall family in Kris D'Agostino's The Antiques is headed by Ana and her dying husband, George, owners of an antique shop in a gentrifying upstate Hudson River village. Their oldest son, Josef, is a hotshot entrepreneur in Manhattan, desperate to sell his precarious company to cover his debts, pay support to his ex-wife and teen daughters, and avoid having to take a job "back schlepping around some soul-draining hedge fund." Charlotte ("Charlie") lives in Los Angeles with a disappointing adjunct film professor and their toddler son, Abbott. Charlie works as a handler for a Paris Hilton-like actress in a string of vampire movies--"Policing YouTube videos.... Making sure Melody always wore panties when she went out."

The youngest, Armand, lives in his parents' basement and crafts wood furniture, moping after a sweet young woman from his mother's church. The siblings rarely talk; George and Ana resignedly live with each other's idiosyncrasies; and a hurricane is bearing down on the East Coast and Manhattan. Should the storm destroy their store's inventory, all George has to leave his family is his prized "lesser Magritte" hanging over their fireplace--appraised once for insurance purposes at a half million dollars.

The Antiques takes place as the hurricane strikes, George dies and the Westfall children return home to sort out how to honor the life of a man who was a distant and difficult father. It is an often funny, often poignant portrait of a quirky family on the skids, but as Ana reflects: "Nobody ever said, 'Here's your family. What do you think?' You just got them. Or you didn't get them." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

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