Also of interest ... in family histories

Why Not Say What Happened?

by Ivana Lowell

(Knopf, $28)

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Ivana Lowell’s climb through her eccentric family tree “is impossible to put down,” said Rachel Cooke in the London Observer. Though her narrative can be “clunky, repetitive, and disorganized,” the Guinness heiress has an admirable ability to “face up bravely to her own failings, and to those of the people around her.” She weaves a fascinating tale about the search for her true father, who could be any one of four men, including poet Robert Lowell and book critic Robert Silvers.

The Box

by Günter Grass

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $23)

Part fiction and part memoir, The Box is an attempt by Günter Grass to discover the minds of his eight children, said Amelia Atlas in BarnesandNobleReview.com. The Nobel laureate frames his narrative around a series of recorded conversations at the family dinner table, but “it’s impossible to tell where Grass’ memory ends and fantasy begins.” The Box offers some intriguing insights on family dynamics, but, like most of Grass’ books, it ends up being mostly about its author.

Missing Lucile

by Suzanne Berne

(Algonquin, $24)

This new memoir from novelist Suzanne Berne is an attempt “to lay a ghost to rest,” said Julie Myerson in The New York Times. Hearing her father tell the story of losing his mother to cancer when he was a boy, Berne becomes convinced that her grandmother’s absence is “the Rosetta stone by which all subsequent family guilt and unhappiness could be decoded.” With “gusto and sensitivity,” she has filled in many biographical details about the woman, yet her speculations can grow tiresome.

A Secret Gift

by Ted Gup

(Penguin, $26)

This riveting nonfiction story is “very much about family secrets,” said Tom Perrotta in The Wall Street Journal. During the Great Depression, the author’s grandfather put an ad in a newspaper promising to “send Christmas cheer in the form of $5 checks to those he determined the neediest.” Gup, a former investigative journalist, tracks down the relatives of the 150 recipients of the holiday checks and learns more about his grandfather than he imagined he could.