There are some sections and characters that don't play as well as the rest for me, but that's the only thing that keeps this one from being a 5 (which I think of as something like "not written by human hands"). Here, I'm harsher on the imperfections because of the parts that really were transcendently good [Jonathan Franzen, as you are undoubtedly reading this, take note].

The opening chapter had me grinning ferociously at the pages in front of me, and many of the later passages transcribing Alfred's mental deterioration (and Alfred and Enid's interactions) were fantastic.

It's about a family (Alfred and Enid are the aging parents), and about adult (more or less) children coming home for Christmas; it leaps outward and back into their pasts from there. Lives falling into ruts, falling together, falling apart. There's quite a lot of humor. But the alarm bell has been ringing for years.