"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" famously begins Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and it is from this classic observation that modern master Carlos Fuentes weaves together sixteen vignettes of families, from the Mexican presidential palaces to the middle-class apartments to the places of the poor. In the language of the street, and in straightforward, elegant prose, Fuentes gives us stories connnected by love, including the failures of it - love between spouses, lovers, parents and children, siblings. Happy Families is a magnificent portrait of modern life in all of its complicated beauty, as told by one of the world most celebrated writers.