I love my immediate family. I really do. I feel incredibly lucky. I don’t want to murder a single one of them ... I mean, I would never!
The only time I get close is around Thanksgiving. I spend way too much time planning, cooking, making special invitations, coordinating everyone’s likes and dislikes, setting up playlists, asking for help, getting yeses—until the time comes, and then crickets. Then the day is over and there are just ... a lot of dishes.
You get the picture.
Now, you can tell me that I put this pressure on myself and you would be 1,000 percent right. But I do have ways of coping. When I’m cooking, I will often listen to true crime or horror, and around the holidays I especially love dark nonfiction or novels that involve families: something edgy to go along with all the vegetables I need to cut with very sharp knives. There doesn’t always have to be murder. Sometimes there is a mysterious disappearance or a second family that is only revealed after a patriarch dies. If you want to count your lucky stars you have the family you have, or the one you’ve chosen, give one of the following listens a try…
Our editors recommend: Dysfunctional families in fiction
