That Old Cape Magic, a comic yet thoughtful take on marriage, is a bit of a departure. It's driven by an unattainable dream of "a finer place," where happiness will be seized if only you can afford it.

That is not something the parents of the main character ever found, despite their longing for a house on Cape Cod on Massachusetts' scenic coast.

A quarreling and adulterous pair of English professors, they were Ivy League snobs who felt exiled at a huge state college in Indiana. Each summer, they headed east to rent on the Cape, dreaming of a finer "future only they could see."

"The only thing they both read — indeed, studied as intently as each year's Modern Language Association job listings — was the real estate guide," whose listings they dismissed into two categories: 'Can't Afford It' or 'Wouldn't Have It As a Gift.' "

At 55, their son, Griffin, remembers all that as the novel opens. He's driving to the Cape for the wedding of his daughter's best friend. His father's ashes are in the trunk, and he's planning to scatter them.

Griffin is a former Hollywood screenwriter who teaches English at a small college in Connecticut. (Russo has been both a professor and screenwriter.)

Griffin's life has gone according to his youthful plans. He's successful, happily married (or so he thinks) and has a well-raised daughter.

Within a year, Griffin's career and marriage have unraveled. It hasn't happened as dramatically as it did for his parents, but he remains haunted by them and their bitter failures.

As he returns to the Cape for another wedding, his daughter's, his trunk carries two urns — his father and mother. In life, his acerbic impossible-to-please mother tauted him by cellphone; in death, she uses other means of communications.

Russo has a gift for creating flawed characters you care about, despite or because of their flaws. He does that here even if Griffin is more sympathic than likable.

The novel's scale is less sweeping and ambitious than Russo's blue-collar family sagas, including Nobody's Fool and Bridge of Sighs.

On the surface, it's more like his hilarious academic satire, Straight Man. But amid the humor, it raises questions about the complications we inherit and the ones we build for ourselves.