Unhappy Birthday!

Not all birthday parties end with presents and a wrapping-paper tiara. Take Heidi Pitlor’s wrenching, Sue Miller–esque debut, The Birthdays. On Joe Miller’s 75th, his children gather to celebrate, each of them nursing wounds. One daughter is pregnant by a sperm donor whom her husband’s infatuated with, another, the youngest, is about to have a baby and doesn’t know who the father is. Distressing but absorbing reading from a Houghton Mifflin senior editor at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge | July 13 @ 6:30 pm | free | 800.542.READ.

Elsewhere: Entertainment Weekly reviews The Birthdays
"The Mircacle of Rosas" in Plougshares