I love a good family saga, but The Turner House isn’t it. While its thirteen-children family in a decaying Detroit house could generate plenty of drama, the author chooses to focus mostly on two of the children, now grown, one of which is a rather boring, mostly responsible man. The other is a deliciously complicated gambling addict, who comes back to the house after having been evicted, and whose lucid plotting for shelter and funds keeps the book going, The history of Detroit is soberly and discreetly told through the family, but the plot does not offer much to the reader besides well-signaled incidents.
(As I was reading this book, I remembered The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
, starring a paltry 12 children in a Philadelphia family, which I liked so little I did not even review on the blog. Be warned.)
FT's Books 