The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

This sprawling account of a family falling apart works much in the same vein as Anna Karenina or A Doll's House. The story is both touchingly intimate (a lot of it is told in the private language that springs up out of the father's nonsense words) and remarkably withdrawn (it felt like lots of secrets were revealed only as things fell more and more apart). This story is definitely of the type where people may live together without ever really knowing each other. Although this story was set in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Annapolis, and all the place names and professions and things were right, it also felt, in a way, as if it could have been set anywhere.