“How to Sleep at Night,” By Elizabeth Harris. William Morrow. 304 pages. $28.99 William Morrow

Here’s a question for the gods of publishing: Is launching a debut novel about a family riven by partisan politics just before a divisive leader once again takes office a good idea, or will readers prefer to stick their heads in the sand and read the classics or watch trash TV for the next four years?

Fortunately for Elizabeth Harris, the answer is largely moot: Her funny, charming “How to Sleep at Night” is infused with enough warmth, depth and engrossing storylines that it overrides any concerns an otherwise burned-out-on-politics reader might have about spending time with a novel that considers the impact that one man’s decision to run for office has on his family.

Ethan Keller and Gabe Alter have what appears to be a picture-perfect life in suburban New Jersey, where they are raising their 5-year-old daughter, Chloe. The story begins when Ethan, a lawyer, who many years earlier was a staffer in the office of the New York attorney general, decides to re-enter politics and run for an open congressional seat.

Gabe initially absorbs this news with detached amusement as he grades papers for his job as a history teacher at an elite Manhattan high school. “That’s great, angel,” he replies obliviously. But when Ethan mentions that he has already spoken to a political consultant, Gabe feels “a ribbon of panic rising in the back of his throat.” And that’s before Ethan says he is planning to run as a Republican.

Harris effectively and believably shows us how the unflinchingly liberal Gabe is placed in the unenviable position of a supportive political spouse, stomaching views he finds offensive. From the outset, the couple’s public and private personae intertwine in a painful contortion of twisted guilt: “It occurred to Gabe in that moment that if their roles were reversed, there was no question that Ethan would support him. Ethan would say yes. And Gabe could not be the reason for his husband’s regret.”

Not only do child-care duties now fall primarily on Gabe, but he must contend with the distrust of colleagues and students and show up — smiling convincingly — at political fundraisers. At one such event, held at an opulent Upper West Side apartment, Gabe is “treated to a stream of conversations that made him want to run screaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows” as patrons opine about unleashing Ethan on the “woke mob” and the “international left-wing conspiracy.”

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Gabe, comically plotting a private rebellion, briefly considers ordering “the girliest cocktail he could think of, to be the husband delicately holding a pink drink by the stem.”

Ethan’s decision turns out to have implications that extend beyond his nuclear family. His sister, Kate Keller — who introduced Gabe and Ethan some 20 years earlier and remains close with both men — is a political reporter at the fictitious Herald Ledger and is warned by her editor to “stay ten thousand miles away from this race at all times.” This mandate leads to a series of unfortunate events that ultimately jeopardize her career.

Kate’s narrative is given equal weight in an absorbing and affecting storyline about her relationship with Nicole Harmon, with whom she had been involved in an emotionally self-destructive relationship while in her 20s.

When we meet her, Nicole is an unfulfilled housewife living, coincidentally, in Ethan’s congressional district. She spends her days making sandwiches and stepping over toys, drifting into a marital malaise with her husband, Austin, a pharma executive 16 years her senior who typically comes home, pours himself a bourbon and watches golf. One morning, when Nicole sees Kate being interviewed on television, the memories rush back, and she eventually messages Kate on Instagram. After a few exchanges, they arrange to meet and soon re-engage in a torrid but tender affair.

As Harris juggles this multilayered plot, she manages to excavate small yet profound emotional truths. Nicole asks herself how she had wound up so far from where she began. “She wondered, sometimes, how much her marriage had also been a function of timing. … It filled her with a fluttery panic to imagine that the foundational decision of her adulthood had been so random.”

Harris is also great on the quotidian details of family life. There is a comical sidebar about Fang, Chloe’s pet albino milk snake, who escapes his tank and is on the loose somewhere in the house, possibly slithering behind the drywall. And all the adults must contend with many, many Legos. Nicole’s house is filled with Lego airplanes and Lego cars and Lego robots. Ethan and Gabe’s house, too. “There is no pain like the corner of a Lego stabbing into your bare foot at one a.m.,” Gabe laments.

Harris captures the granular details of newsroom life, too, which is no surprise given that she is a reporter at the New York Times. Readers are treated to what feels like an inside view of newsroom operations, including interior-design choices — “a big open rectangle of space … designed this way so different departments could be within shouting distance if they needed to collaborate on news” — and the various departmental personalities. Reporters on the business desk “tended to look more put together than their compatriots,” for example, while at the international desk, where the reporters are all overseas, the editors “vibrated with anxiety and caffeine.”

Will Ethan win his seat? Will Nicole leave her husband? Can Gabe and Ethan emerge from the election crucible with their marriage intact? And has Fang forever disappeared inside the 2-by-4s of a suburban New Jersey house? No spoilers here, but if you are skipping the inaugural balls this year, you can do no better than to curl up with this sparkling book.

Susan Coll is the author of several novels, including “The Literati,” which will be published in September.

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