The Antiques: A Novel

About this book

"On the night of a massive, record-breaking hurricane, George Westfall, an upstate New York antique store owner and father of three, lays dying. As his wife Ana seals up the storefront, their adult son Armie hides from the outside world as he always does, immersed in woodwork and thoughts of the past. In New York City, Armie's older brother Josef, a sex-addicted techie, is fighting to repair his broken relationship with his daughters. And out in Los Angeles their sister Charlie's career as a Hollywood publicist is crumbling. For the Westfalls, Murphy's Law is in full effect. Their patriarch dies as the storm hits town, flooding the store and ruining Josef's business negotiations. Charlie is desperately trying to set a movie starlet straight, while handling her son's expulsion from preschool and her wayward husband. And Armie, who's still in love with his high school crush Audrey, can't even muster the courage to leave his childhood home. Only when the children reunite to sell their father's beloved heirloom painting do they discover their real fortune lies elsewhere. A rollicking tableau of family life in all its messy complexity, like the best of Meg Wolitzer and Tom Perrotta, The Antiques is hilarious, heartbreaking, nimble, and observant. Complete with deeply flawed, affectionately rendered characters and an irresistible plot, Kris D'Agostino's unforgettable novel is about the unexpected epiphanies that emerge in chaos, and the loved ones who help show us who we really are"--