Roy, a psychotherapist, and his first wife, Bea, a caterer, are the linchpins of an extended family dispersed throughout an apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side. Around them cluster their four children with assorted friends and lovers; Roy’s next two wives, one of them stolen from a neurotic parent; and Bea’s lover (the Russian emigres superintendent), lesbian artist sister, andcaustic mother.

Blending satire and sympathy, Lynne Sharon Schwartz takes aim at contemporary social and sexual behavior as this confused but clever cast of characters, with their entanglements and betrayals, seeks love and happiness in the free- for-all nineties. Blinded by self-deception, and driven by self-gratification, they couple and uncouple as they struggle to redefine the idea of family. In theFamily Way combines the frothiness and bounce of a sitcom with the literary elegance of an accomplished and wryly serious writer. Jane Austen would definitely approve.