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Cinematically vivid with heartstopping dialogue, **Apologize, Apologize!** is an extraordinary debut about a family that puts the personality in disorder. Welcome to the world of the fantastic Flanagans; a wildly eccentric Massachusetts clan that is both blessed and afflicted with an inexhaustible reservoir of old money, unwavering subversive charm – and a veritable chorus of dogs. At the centre of this maelstrom is sensible Collie Flanagan, first-born son and heir to his grandfather’s publishing fortune, whose easy life is shattered by the outcome of a casual afternoon outing. Affecting, funny and wise, this is a rollicking story packed with characters that are a delight to get to know, and are impossible to forget. **Excerpt:** My name is Collie Flanagan. Ma chose the name Collie after re-discovering the books of Albert Payson Terhune, the guy who wrote* Lad: A Dog*. Pop swore she read him throughout the pregnancy hoping to give birth to a puppy. During my baptism a fight broke out at the altar when the priest objected to me being named after a breed of dog, saying there was no St. Collie and Ma told him there damn well should be and Pop announced that maybe I’d be the first. At Andover they called me Lassie. That was fun. ### From Publishers Weekly Collie Flanagan's life is part *Grey Gardens* and part *The Royal Tenenbaums* in this beautifully written if unwieldy dramedy debut. Raised on Martha's Vineyard, Collie is the dull link in his flamboyant family: his adulterous, alcoholic father and cruelly pugnacious mother maintain a miserable relationship that overshadows even the overblown personalities of his pigeon-racing uncle and his prep-school failure brother. As storms of irresponsibility rage, Collie lives in quiet, stable success until a one-two punch of family tragedy leaves him reeling. Collie's relationship with his media magnate grandfather becomes contentious as Collie spins out of control and tries wildly different ways to make restitution and become a man. Kelly is a gifted writer (Collie's mother attacks with a verbal pitchfork. Before the night was over, just about everyone in the place had sprung leaks, blood and champagne spurting from all those glamorous human fountains), but her chops as a novelist aren't as refined: Collie is as pallid as the other characters are unbelievable, and though the crazed drama keeps the story moving, it's often incredible. Though hampered by these weaknesses, Collie's quest is worth reading for the elegant prose alone. *(Mar.)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### From The New Yorker In this rousingly pell-mell début novel, the tender arc of a bildungsroman is nearly squelched by a backdrop of epic family farce. The “fantastic Flanagans” of Squibnocket Beach suffer from “compulsive vividness.” They brawl and squall without consequences, kept afloat by money “falling from the sky like ticker tape,” courtesy of a disapproving and distant media-mogul patriarch. Ma is an aspiring Marxist insurrectionist (“Ma collected Commies the way other women accumulate Tupperware”) who thinks that being difficult is “the hallmark of the artistic mind”; Pop is a skirt-chaser and a drunk. An equally lunatic (and alcoholic) “maiden uncle” is entrusted with the actual work of bringing up the kids. All are observed with sardonic affection by the straight-arrow elder son, who lives in the shadow of his wild-card brother. Inevitably, tragedy strikes, but the giddy prose never stops, detonating like a string of firecrackers. Copyright ©2008* Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker*