Author(s): James Wood

Fiction

Receiving word that his daughter Vanessa, who moved to America to become a professor of philosophy, has fallen into a severe depression, Alan Querry and his younger daughter, Helen, travel from England to upstate New York. Over six wintry days, the family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others? Is happiness a skill to be learned or a lucky accident of birth?