The best funny, feelgood fiction about families

Why are more of Kerstin’s rom-com novels not available in English? That’s what I want to know.

This really is hilarious from start to finish, as we follow the hapless adventures of romance writer Gerri. While she tries to cope with losing her job, feeling forever single and even suicidal, her mother, father, and siblings only want to know when is she going to meet someone, preferably a professor, and settle down.

It’s the bizarre family dinners that capture the perfect madness that get-togethers with your parents and grown-up siblings can produce. And it takes an extremely talented writer to create an attempted (maybe that should be interrupted) suicide scene that is at once truly touching and hilarious.

A joyful read, particularly if, like me, you have some German relatives!

Like most of the female population, I have a major soft spot for Bridget Jones – the eternally insecure English girl.

Of all the novels, Mad About the Boy is probably my favourite because here our heroine is older and once again single, but this time she has her two beloved children in tow. All the tribulations of single motherhood are upon her, from the school run to the dreaded headlice, but nevertheless she is once again venturing onto the dating scene.

It doesn’t matter that Bridget is, shockingly, over 50 in this book, she will remain forever a girl in both our minds and hers as she battles to overcome all her deeply hampering hang-ups to get what she knows she wants from life.  

Every comedy needs a truly memorable comedy scene and once you’ve read this book, you will never look at any birthday cake with candles in quite the same way again.

This plot is based on of my favourite setups – grown up siblings being forced to spend time in their family home together. In this case, they are mourning their recently deceased Dad. The seven-day stay is long enough for all the niceties to wear off and the real sibling rivalries, unresolved arguments, and tensions to surface and here, they are properly aired and almost resolved.

The very funny side and the searingly painful side are both so well done. If your sibs and in-laws are crazy or crazy-annoying, Tropper will make sure you know you are not alone. 

This story is in the style that Shari is making her own – a critical 24 hours in the intertwined lives of her characters.

It’s a skilful weaving of lightness and big laughs, plus painful, dramatic elements with break-neck plotting. Here, she builds her story round a group of friends and neighbours, who have known and supported each other for so long that they’ve created a ‘family’ owing nothing to genetics.

I love the Glasgow details, like the hospital carpark row with an audience of giggling nurses clutching sausage rolls. I also love the salt-of-the-earth older ladies in Shari’s books – the fiery ‘wummin’ holding lives together with their humour and strength of character.

Pick this up and you will not stop till you turn the last page. 

This is a very famous book, made into a movie of course, and it is so, so good, even if I’m never sure how to pronounce ‘Macon.’

There is deep wrenching sadness to overcome in a story that is about losing a child, but also includes a wayward terrier called Edward and an unforgettable comedy scene involving a skateboard, a flight of stairs, and some contraption supposed to make laundry easier.

Fussy Macon and his peculiar siblings are wonderfully drawn and absolutely need the quirky Muriel Pritchett to come and disrupt their lives. I’ve left this till the last in the list, but it is the masterclass in how to write families with all their love, sadness, pain, and comedy and make it turn out happily in the end.