The Facts of Life

This sweeping saga from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition follows three generations of an English family from World War II through the AIDS crisis.   Sally Banks meets Edward Pepper when the German-Jewish soldier is lying wounded in an English hospital during World War II. After he recovers, Edward invites Sally to accompany him to a concert. Despite the fact that he's several years her junior, they begin dating and, little by little, reveal themselves to each other. Sally is horrified to learn that Edward's parents died in a concentration camp and that he has no idea whether his older sister, Miriam, survived.   When they marry, Sally settles into her role as housewife while Edward finds work writing movie scores. Soon Sally gives birth to a daughter they name Miriam. Then Edward has a fleeting, guilt-ridden affair with an actress, and suffers a physical and emotional breakdown. The decades pass. Edward, now a successful composer, attempts to help his grandchildren come to terms with the harsh realities of contemporary life.   Twenty-five-year-old Jamie has anonymous sex with strangers he picks up on the street or at the gym. His older sister, Alison, an editor at a publishing house, feels she's "still marking time," waiting for her real life to begin. Then she uncovers a secret in Edward's past that shatters her image of her grandfather. Jamie falls in love with Sam, ushering in an idyllic life-until he discovers he's HIV-positive. His illness brings his mother, who insists her children call her Miriam, back into his life with a vengeance. And for Edward, it will take a tragedy to bring a relationship begun years earlier full circle.  The Facts of Life gallops across the eras, through war and peace and the battleground of AIDS. With equal doses of irony and pathos and featuring a cast of smart, self-aware characters whose brittle outer shells conceal a terrifying fragility, this is a compulsively readable family saga that defies our expectations even as it pulls at our heartstrings.