Editor’s note: After a 30-years-plus career in publishing, Ann La Farge now works as a freelance editor and syndicated book review columnist. She lives in Dutchess County, NY.

From Huck to Holden, from Babbitt to Rabbit, the great fictional seekers ask the big questions: What am I doing, where am I going and what does it all mean?

I love a good picaresque novel. Elizabeth Kelly’s début, Apologize, Apologize!, is jarringly lovable, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, and, afterward, challenging to talk about: a perfect book club book. The story is told in the first person by Collie Flanagan, the "good boy" in a family of ne’er-do-much weirdos living on Martha’s Vineyard in the dilapidated luxury they can easily afford thanks to Boston grandfather Peregrine Lowell, aka the Falcon.

Collie – his mother named him after a dog in an Albert Payson Terhune book ("at Andover they called me Lassie") — is a year older than his flamboyant brother Bing (named for an Irish setter). "It could have been worse; she could have called us Sacco and Vanzetti."

"Why can’t you just do what you’re supposed to do?" Collie rails when Bing is kicked out of yet another New England prep school. Back home, Mom is a do-gooder who does little good; Dad is a pontificating drunk; bachelor Uncle Tom races pigeons; while wall-to-wall dogs snore in every room of the house. It ain’t easy to be normal.

Many bildungsromans feature an eccentric, "difficult" hero trying to navigate the calm waters of a "normal" family (or world). This novel turns that scenario upside down: "normal" Collie seeks a path to conventional success, all the while secretly wishing he had a little of the magic Bing possesses. "There was no magic in me."

The novel bumps along from set piece to set piece as family antics erupt … until a horrific accident takes place, tearing Collie’s world apart. The narrative then finds its heart in Collie’s quest for a ManPlan — and, perhaps, for redemption. His quest takes him far and wide — to South America, to Ireland, to a new (and potentially dangerous) career. "Does anyone," he asks, "ever make a sensible decision?" Do the stories we present to the world ever correspond to the stories we tell ourselves?

Funny, sometimes shocking, this astonishingly readable and memorable first novel contains disasters great and small, poignant introspection, the antics of dogs and pigeons and the fierce and tender bonds of love. Elizabeth Kelly is an author to watch. And, once again, it’s a perfect book for a book club. May the fur fly!

Click here to share your comments about the book in the Apologize, Apologize! Reader Forum.