THE ACCIDENTAL FAVORITE

What happens to three adult sisters when they suddenly find out their father has a favorite?

The Fisher sisters—Alex, Nancy, and Eva—know everything about each other. Or maybe they know nothing. When they gather with their parents, Vivienne and Patrick, and some of their kids and significant others at a posh glass-walled vacation house in the British countryside, everything breaks down. Watching the sisters sort out their lives and put them back together is at the heart of this warm, funny, insightful novel. The book kicks off with what seems to be a near-disaster: As Patrick is taking photos of the sisters outdoors, a tree behind them starts to fall. In a moment, he rushes past Alex and Nancy to pull Eva out of danger. It’s shocking—like most parents, Patrick and Vivienne have always said they don’t have a favorite child. But it seems he does. Worse, the family doesn’t get to hash it out in private, because Eva’s teenage daughter Lucy caught the rescue on video, and of course it goes viral. The near miss turns out to be a disaster after all, cracking open the pleasant surfaces of the sisters’ lives. Alex, the oldest, has just had her third child at 45, and she’s struggling with exhaustion, with her stale marriage, and with a secret obsession with her first love, whom she stalks on social media like a teenager. Nancy, the middle sister, is frazzled by her job as a radiologist and by sharing custody of her young daughter, Georgie, with her jerk of an ex. Eva is the youngest and by far the richest; she invented a board game for her kid that turned into a bestseller. The vacation house is her treat, but money doesn’t solve everything. The narrative line is complex, moving back and forth in time and among the sisters and their mother, but Littlewood handles it skillfully. Her characters, flawed as they are, are engaging and relatable, and her sense of family dynamics captures all the old wounds, shifting hierarchies, inside jokes, and sturdy if skewed love the sisters share.

Even under pressure, sisterhood is powerful in this entertaining and well-crafted novel.