It's 1980s New York. Heady, excessive times. Alice Burns - a young book editor - is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations resonate, perhaps because she has just watched her own family implode. As she reads she wonders : When did the sadness start ? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice ? Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school bullying, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970s Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the US embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan. But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers ; how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others. The Great Wide Open is an immensely ambitious and compulsive saga ; a novel which will speak volumes to anyone who has marvelled at that pain that can only be caused by family itself.