The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs: A Novel - Softcover

"Peery's insightful writing turns a happily-ever-after conclusion into appreciation for the serenity of acceptance and steadfastness." - Booklist

"A tender - if not altogether surprising - family portrait with generous heart. Ultimately satisfying, a quiet novel with lingering warmth." - Kirkus

"A powerful new novel...Potent and memorable." - Publishers Weekly

"An honest portrait of a complicated family...The author deftly reveals the innermost thoughts of seven separate characters [with] pitch-perfect prose." - Washington Independent Review of Books

"It's rare to find a book that so mercilessly, and beautifully, and honestly concerns itself with middle-aged life. With the tender, enduring, fraught relationships among aging siblings and their even more aged parents. Janet Peery is a magnificent sentence-maker and a faithful reporter of the human condition as it regards this large and flawed and recognizable -- so recognizable -- midwestern family. I will gift everyone I know with a copy of The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs, just because it has such important confirmation to bestow upon us." --Antonya Nelson, author of Talking in Bed and Funny Once

"Never have the highs and lows of love and sacrifice―of addiction and enabling―and the inevitable passage of time, been so eloquently rendered in the moments and memories of everyday life. Janet Peery has masterfully connected all the points of one family’s complex constellation and emerged with a brilliantly moving and unforgettable novel." --Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life

"Piercingly observant of the minutia that make life meaningful, Janet Peery paints a portrait in The Exact Nature of our Wrongs of a family both unmistakably familiar and unforgettably unique, one that will stay with you for a while. This is a richly accomplished, novel by a writer as wryly funny as she is wise." --Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea and The New Valley

"A masterpiece. One of the wisest, most nuanced evocations of the hopeless quandary of family relations--the trying to understand, to get along, the failure and the suffering--and yet the grace of it, too." --Blake Bailey, author of Cheever: A Life

"Powerful writing." - The Virginian-Pilot