A wonderful, richly textured story focusing on several generations of one family through a year of their lives. At the heart of the novel is Lily: sister of Marie (three children, no husband) and Rory (doesn't want to come home for Christmas as he knows it will all be platform kisses and catch-up conversations); wife of Art (cool and laid back, everything Lily would like to be and just isn't); daughter of Mattie and John (in domestic chaos - have just learned that their pensions will be about half of what they anticipated and that they face penury in their old age); granddaughter of Grandpa (lives a secret Internet life posing as a much younger man). It's when Grandpa accidentally pops the TV remote in the post that the family's troubles really begin...