Jennifer E. Smith’s latest novel, Fun for the Whole Family, presents a masterful exploration of family bonds, the weight of secrets, and the complicated journey toward reconciliation. With her signature blend of heart and humor, Smith crafts a story that feels both intimate and expansive, taking readers on a cross-country journey through memories, regrets, and second chances.
A Snowy Reunion in North Dakota
The novel centers on the four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—who haven’t spoken to each other in three years when they receive unexpected text messages from Jude summoning them to Portree, North Dakota. Each sibling arrives at this peculiar destination carrying personal baggage: Gemma is secretly undergoing IVF treatments with her husband Mateo; Connor is recently divorced and suffering from writer’s block after his controversial family-inspired novel won a National Book Award; Roddy is jeopardizing his upcoming wedding to pursue one final season as a professional soccer player; and Jude is harboring not one but three life-altering secrets.
Smith expertly alternates between present-day chapters and flashbacks to the siblings’ childhoods, particularly focusing on their summer road trips with their mother Frankie, who abandoned them for most of the year but returned each August to take them across the country, intent on visiting all fifty states. These flashbacks provide crucial context for understanding the complicated dynamics that both bind and separate the siblings.
Character Development: The Heart of the Story
What makes this novel shine is Smith’s nuanced portrayal of each sibling. They aren’t mere archetypes but fully realized characters with distinct personalities, insecurities, and dreams:
- Gemma, the eldest, stepped into a maternal role when their mother left, sacrificing her own ambitions to care for her siblings. Her struggle with whether to become a mother herself forms one of the novel’s most poignant arcs.
- Connor, the writer who turned their family history into controversial fiction, grapples with the consequences of using their shared past for his art, while trying to maintain a relationship with his children amid his divorce.
- Roddy, a professional soccer player nearing retirement, must decide what matters most: one final season or his impending marriage to Winston.
- Jude, the famous actress, appears to have it all together but harbors the most significant secrets, including the true nature of her reunion with their estranged mother years earlier.
Smith excels at depicting the complex interplay between siblings who both know each other intimately and have grown apart, creating moments of both tension and tenderness that feel genuinely earned rather than manufactured for dramatic effect.
Setting as Character: The Significance of Place
The novel’s setting—an isolated cabin in North Dakota during a snowstorm—functions brilliantly as both literal plot device and metaphor. The characters are physically trapped together, forced to confront their shared past and individual choices without the possibility of escape. The harsh, beautiful landscape mirrors the emotional terrain they must navigate.
Smith’s decision to set crucial scenes in a variety of locations across America (from Michigan to Texas to California) reinforces the siblings’ nomadic childhood and their mother’s quest to visit all fifty states. This geographic breadth gives the novel an epic quality despite its intimate focus on family relationships.
Thematic Richness
Fun for the Whole Family explores several interconnected themes with depth and sensitivity:
- The nature of forgiveness – Can we forgive those who’ve hurt us most deeply? Smith doesn’t offer easy answers but instead shows the messy, ongoing process of reconciliation.
- The tension between personal ambition and family obligation – Each sibling grapples with this conflict in different ways, from Gemma’s postponed dreams to Roddy’s career vs. relationship dilemma.
- The inheritance of trauma – The siblings have internalized their mother’s abandonment in various ways, affecting their adult relationships and life choices.
- Truth and storytelling – Connor’s novel raises questions about who “owns” family stories and the responsibility of storytellers to their subjects.
Structural Brilliance
Smith employs a dual timeline structure that enhances rather than complicates the narrative. The flashbacks aren’t merely expository but reveal crucial information exactly when readers need it, building toward multiple revelations that reframe our understanding of past events.
The weekend unfolds over several days, with each new disclosure shifting the dynamic between siblings. Smith maintains tension throughout, parceling out revelations at precisely the right moments to keep readers engaged without feeling manipulated.
Emotional Impact: When Secrets Surface
The novel’s emotional core lies in Jude’s three secrets, which Smith unveils with exceptional skill. Each revelation fundamentally alters the siblings’ understanding of their shared history and present circumstances:
- The truth about the car fire that ended their childhood road trips
- Jude’s reunion with their mother before her death
- Jude’s own medical diagnosis
These secrets function not as mere plot twists but as catalysts for genuine emotional growth among the characters. The revelations are handled with sensitivity and restraint, avoiding melodrama while still delivering emotional impact.
Prose That Balances Lightness and Depth
Smith’s writing strikes a delicate balance between accessibility and literary merit. Her prose is clear and often conversational, peppered with moments of humor that provide necessary relief from the emotional intensity:
“Are we really going ice fishing?” Rosie asks, leaning in to peer at her dad’s itinerary, wrinkling her nose at the thought. If Hugh looks like Roddy, then Rosie is a carbon copy of young Jude, down to the freckles, and seeing the two of them together makes Gemma feel like time has bent in on itself somehow.
At the same time, Smith crafts passages of striking insight and beauty, particularly when exploring the siblings’ interior lives:
“It’s funny how you can want something and not want it at the same time, how you can love your life the way it is and also wonder if there’s more.”
Comparative Context
Fans of Smith’s previous adult novel, The Unsinkable Greta James, will recognize her talent for exploring family dynamics and personal growth amid challenging circumstances. However, Fun for the Whole Family expands her scope, juggling multiple protagonists and a more complex narrative structure with impressive dexterity.
The novel brings to mind other acclaimed family dramas like Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth and Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest, but Smith’s distinctive voice and her deft handling of both humor and heartbreak set this work apart. Like these contemporaries, Smith understands that families are both our greatest comfort and our greatest challenge.
Minor Shortcomings
While largely successful, the novel occasionally struggles with:
- Secondary character development – Winston, Spencer, and other partners occasionally feel more like plot devices than fully realized characters.
- Pacing in the middle section – Some readers may find the snowbound cabin sequences slightly repetitive, though they ultimately serve the narrative’s emotional build.
- The convenient resolution of certain conflicts – A few plot points resolve a bit too neatly, though Smith generally avoids easy answers to complex problems.
Final Verdict: A Moving Examination of Family Ties
Fun for the Whole Family is a deeply moving exploration of sibling bonds, parental legacies, and the difficult path to forgiveness. Jennifer E. Smith demonstrates remarkable skill in balancing multiple perspectives, weaving past and present, and delivering emotional payoffs that feel both surprising and inevitable.
The novel’s power lies in its recognition that family relationships are never simple—they’re messy, contradictory, frustrating, and essential. Smith captures how siblings can know each other better than anyone else while still harboring crucial misunderstandings, and how reconciliation requires not just forgiveness but genuine acceptance of one another’s truths.
By the novel’s emotional epilogue, set one year after the North Dakota weekend, readers will feel they’ve been on a journey with the Endicotts—across states and decades, through joy and heartbreak, and ultimately toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be family.
For readers who appreciate emotionally resonant contemporary fiction with compelling characters and thematic depth, Fun for the Whole Family is a journey well worth taking.
