Birthday Pie: A Novel by Arthur Wooten

Birthday Pie: A Novel is about family. This book reflects pretty well how most families are: dysfunctional. Yes, there is no such thing as a normal family but in the end blood is usually thicker than water. They might drive you crazy, you might want to run away screaming and break away as far as you can, but in the end they are yours and you belong to that odd group.

Families are crazy. We all have strange members who do crazy things and we sometimes hate their guts but deep down cannot help but love them. We think we know our family members, but there are different levels of knowledge and somehow we just scrape the surface and the core, leaving a whole lot of middle to be kept secret and personal. Sometimes that surfaces when everything starts to go terribly wrong in this life. This is what this book is about, finding out that middle by scraping the surface and it is always unexpected and quite surprising.

Lex is a children's books writer who comes back to visit his family for his birthday and see his dieing father. We get introduced to all of his messed up relatives and the past surfaces from time to time. Each of them has their own personal story that made them who they are today. Everybody had a personal drama and that reflected on their own personality and life; be it the death of a parent, love lost or just crazy a christian wife who doesn't like sex. 

This book just shows how complicated families really are. Each individual bringing his or her own thing in the mix and finally ending with a connection that is either strong or weak depending on affinities and how each member has influenced the other's life. I consider this a must read because it made me ponder on my relationship with my own blood. Maybe it's the holidays, maybe the book hit a nerve by itself, but I really enjoyed it. This book really has heart.