Family Planning

by Tim Parks

Raymond is mad, clever, manipulative and totally out of his parents' control. The other children are lying low, though still inextricably attached to their father's purse-strings. Amidst hilarious misunderstandings and poignant inadequacies, six well-meaning people relentlessly engineer their own and their loved ones' downfall.

Genres: Fiction

285 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, raising a family of three children. He has written fourteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, and most recently In Extremis.
During the nineties he wrote two, personal and highly popular accounts of his life in northern Italy, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education. These were complemented in 2002 by A Season with Verona, a grand overview of Italian life as seen through the passion of football. Other non-fiction works include a history of the Medici bank in 15th century Florence, Medici Money and a memoir on health, illness and meditation, Teach Us to Sit Still. In 2013 Tim published his most recent non-fiction work on Italy, Italian Ways, on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo.
Aside from his own writing, Tim has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leopardi; his critical book, Translating Style is considered a classic in its field. He is presently working on a translation of Cesare Pavese's masterpiece, The Moon and the Bonfires.
A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, his many essays are collected in Hell and Back, The Fighter, A Literary Tour of Italy, and Life and Work.
Over the last five years he has been publishing a series of blogs on writing, reading, translation and the like in the New York Review online. These have recently been collected in Where I am Reading From and Pen in Hand.

Reviews

[Ayush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its a good read. A quintessential Briton Family hooking up to its family values and pressures. The letter sharing is really inspiring. It makes me live in a world with no telephones and only letters as a medium of communication.

[Deborah]

Incredible characters.

[Peggymca · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ultimate dysfunctional family, no addicts, one schizophrenic son. Well-written. Nothing resolved. I wish I hadn't read it.