HOW TO SURVIVE A NATURAL DISASTER

The story of a dysfunctional suburban family, seen through the eyes of its most troubled members.

More anthropomorphized animals and midlife crises from journalist and critic Hawkins (A Year of Cats and Dogs, 2009, etc.) make for a weird and spiteful second novel. This odd multinarrator drama feels like a big fake-out from the beginning. The book opens with a confession from May, a newly landed immigrant adoptee from Peru, robbed of her native name of Esmeralda. The experience, it seems, has rendered her mute. After that jarring introduction, we meet April, May’s precocious sister, who is the center of her mother’s world. Their mother, Roxanne, is a hateful, hypocritical Stepford Wife aspirant who takes her considerable venom out on her husband. Craig, meanwhile, is a beta male with many regrets, who responds to his wife’s nagging to get a job by obsessively filling out contest entries. Though he genuinely loves his adopted daughter, his confessions are merely sad. “Later, years later, Roxanne accused me of staying for the kitchen. It was a low blow, though she was partly right,” he says. “The truth is I didn’t know where else to go.” This story of familial self-destruction is familiar, although Hawkins doses the book with truly bizarre perspectives that may intrigue more impulsive readers. The outsider’s perspective comes from Phoebe, the obese shut-in who lives next door and uses her creepy observations to chronicle the family’s destiny. The insider’s look comes from Mr. Cosmo, the family’s three-legged Weimaraner. “I don’t mean to sound self-absorbed although I know that’s how people think of me—flighty and selfish and handsome—but the stress in that household was almost unbearable by then,” the dog moans. Readers who get this far will be rewarded with a clichéd tragedy that may well inspire them to turn on any characters they’ve embraced.

An exasperating, caustic read that is difficult to swallow, despite its brevity.