What the Family Needed, Steven Amsterdam
What the Family Needed, Steven Amsterdam
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What the Family Needed

Author: Steven Amsterdam

Narrator: Tanya Eby

Unabridged: 6 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/21/2013


Synopsis

“Okay, tell me which you want,” Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed. “To be able to fly or to be invisible?” And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents’ divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Alek’s mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Steven Amsterdam’s incandescent novel follows the members of this gorgeously imagined extended family over three decades, as they each discover, at a moment of crisis, that they possess a supernatural power. But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, the family confronts inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove to be not so much magic weapons but expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and the real magic is revealed to lie not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous ways they are able to accept, protect, and love one another.

About Steven Amsterdam

Steven Amsterdam is the author of Things We Didn’t See Coming, which was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Age Book of the Year Award, among other honors. A native New Yorker and a nurse, he lives in Melbourne, Australia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Maria on December 12, 2013

Non fatevi trarre in inganno dal titolo: non è un libro superficiale. Ammetto che inizialmente ci sono cascata anch'io: il termine superpoteri ha spalancato il baule della mia infanzia tirando fuori una serie di immagini legate a paladini della giustizia, calzamaglie fluorescenti, mutazioni genetiche......more

Goodreads review by Jborghi on March 05, 2013

Members of a family develop special abilities as they grow older and experience the mundane traumas of life. This is the central conceit of “What the Family Needed” an interesting, though flawed, collection by Steven Amsterdam.[return][return]Made up of an uneven set of short stories, “What the Fami......more

Goodreads review by Tanya on January 05, 2013

I just finished narrating this. Now, no one has specifically told me that I shouldn't post reviews on books I narrate, but I generally don't, just because it's not my job to judge. My job is to give characters voices to the best of the ability. That said, I LOVED THIS BOOK. I say that loudly. There's......more

Goodreads review by Dhanaraj on April 06, 2013

Picked it up by chance. But had a wonderful time reading it. It is about two family. There are totally seven members. And the 7 chapters in the book are dedicated to each member of the family. Each member is with a supernatural power (eg: able to be invisible, able to fly, ability to be a cupid, etc......more

Goodreads review by Owen on September 01, 2022

A touching examination of a troubled family, with extra magic realism. In the first chapter I thought What the Family Needed was a domestic drama focused on two family units awkwardly combining with the tantalising conceit of an eccentric child granting super powers as a form of consolation. Then the......more