Novelist makes the political world laugh with his new book

Author Grant Ginder writes about dysfunctional families — “specifically, the imperfect way we love each other,” as he describes it. Ginder, whose recent titles include The People We Hate at the Wedding and Honestly, We Meant Well, has released a new dysfunctional family book, Let’s Not Do That Again (Henry Holt). The awkward family dynamic is there, but so is an additional aspect: politics.

Nancy Harrison is running for Senate and nothing can stop her – except maybe her grown children. When her daughter Greta makes headlines for throwing a bottle of champagne through a Paris restaurant while marching with a group of extremist protesters, Nancy sends her son Nick to France to talk his sister into reason and ship her back to the United States bring. The discovery that Greta is dating a far-right French provocateur sets in motion a series of events and complications that will ruin Nancy’s chances, destroy her family and possibly land one or all of them in prison. (Without spoiling it, a trash compactor plays an important role in the narrative.)

Politics is a world Ginder knows well; Before turning to fiction and writing essays at NYU, he internshipd with California Representative Loretta Sanchez and later worked as a speechwriter for John Podesta.

“I learned pretty quickly that our elected leaders and their staff are just as screwed up as the rest of us. Nobody knows what they’re doing until the moment they do it,” he says. “It’s more Veep than West Wing. How many times I’ve laced up for half a sandwich at 4 p.m.—that had little glamor.”

The shine was off the apple, but his time in DC taught him what he really wanted to do.

“Coming to DC, I realized it was a city about knowing things first and having access. That was one day when I was in the communications department. I forgot which pope, but one pope was about to die,” he says. “And everyone said, ‘Is he dead yet, is he dead yet?’ And it was a competition to know. And I thought maybe this isn’t the world for me. But I wrote speeches and loved exploring the rhetorical power of storytelling. I loved figuring that out and how it worked.”