In You Only Call When You're in Trouble, Stephen McCauley (My Ex-Life) brings one small, unconventional family under a closely observed lens. At age 63, Tom Kemp has acted as a stabilizing force for his flighty sister, Dorothy, and fatherless niece, Cecily, for decades. And although he doesn't exactly resent them for it, he's in the midst of a make-or-break moment in his career as an architect in Boston. He will need all his faculties and focus when it comes to selling the design of his tiny-house masterpiece to his clients Charlotte Morley and Oliver Fuchs. Especially since Charlotte has decided to change her mind about the whole thing at the last minute.
There could be no worse time for Tom to learn that Cecily is facing a Title IX investigation at Deerpath College in Chicago, where she is a professor of American studies. The allegations concern the nature of a relationship that developed with a student, who then kissed her. Add to all that Dorothy's invitation for everyone to join her at the grand opening of an inadvisable retreat center in Woodstock, N.Y., not to mention the teensy-tiny matter of Cecily's true paternity--and You Only Call When You're in Trouble positively teems with situational comedy, dramatic secrets, and hard-earned wisdom.
McCauley writes sentences that ring with the clear and true tones of melodies spun from crystal glassware: "[Tom] sometimes felt as if he were in a nail-biting race with the planet to see which of them died first." His incandescent mixture of observational humor and humane characterizations makes Stephen McCauley worth calling on again and again. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness