Domestic Arrangements

The paradoxes set up between love and sex in contemporary American life are explored with subtle insight and brilliantly incisive humor in this culturally prescient novel.

Domestic Arrangements is about a recognizable family facing a recognizable dilemma—how to respond to their daughter’s first affair. The Englebergs are not altogether ordinary though: Mom is Amanda, an in-demand actress whose specialties are TV commercials and soap operas; Daddy is Lionel, the director of an Emmy-winning TV documentary; Tatiana, our fourteen-year-old narrator, is a budding actress who just filmed her first ‘tasteful’ nude scene; and finally Cordelia, Tatiana’s acerbic and sharp-witted sister who is facing her own crisis of self-image.

Norma Klein’s novel speaks to a multitude of readers who will empathize with the foibles of our time in every scene of this perceptive and honest literary entertainment.