For a good read, I recommend A Family Album by Penelope Lively This story is set at a big Edwardian estate in suburban London called Allersmead, where we meet the family of Charles and Alison, their six children, and their au pair, Ingrid, who came to live with the family to help take care of their first born and remained with them for 40 years.  The story takes place over a period of time spanning the 1970s to the present. 

The mother, Alison, never aspired to anything but raising a large, happy family.  She prepares beautiful food and creates fun activities for the children.  Over the years, the house becomes something like a museum to the memory of the six children with photos of the kids at various ages, the crafts and drawings made during childhood on display throughout.  Charles, a writer, is moody and detached, and spends most of his time hiding away in his study, while Ingrid, the cheerless but steady au pair helps keep the household chaos under control.  

The omniscient narrator describes several scenes from the family’s life over the years – a birthday party where one of this children is taken to the hospital in an ambulance, a summer vacationing in a cottage by the seaside, secret games that the children played in the cellar, and the time Ingrid packed up and left, only to return a few months later. Then each of the nine characters is given a chapter to present his or her own memory of events previously described by the narrator.  The result shows how a family can, at once, know the other members intimately, and remain very much an individual, often with very different memories of and reactions to shared experiences. 

Penelope Lively has a unique gift to convey a saga like this – rich, detailed, and descriptive yet lovely and compact.   If you belong to a book group, put this one on your “must read” list because it is very worthy of discussion!