Tag Archives: Adultery

A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford

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Synopsis:
When David learns that he has a daughter from an affair, and that she needs a bone marrow transplant from his son, he confesses all to his wife and tries to put his marriage back together.

Review:
I really did not care for A Morning Like This. I felt like David expected cheap grace just because the child from his affair had cancer, and didn’t think he needed to do any real work of repentance. He was just awful to Abby, not allowing her the space to grieve the loss of the marriage she thought she had. He didn’t seem to have any sense of the depth of his sin, nor sorrow over wronging God. Where is the fear and trembling?

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The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

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Synopsis:
A tight-knit group of 4 couples must deal with the sudden and suspicious deaths of two of their own.

Review:
The Castaways put me off at first because it reminded me of The Big Chill, a movie I’ve never liked. I’ve never really been able to put my finger on why, except I know it has something to do with Glenn Close’s smug smile throughout. Perhaps it was because although they were ostensibly reuniting because of a death, they were so solipsistic in their mourning. I found some of that in The Castaways, with motherly Andrea taking the Glenn Close role as the most annoying among them.

Greg and Tess have always been the golden couple in their group of eight, but when they go out for an anniversary sail from their home in Nantucket to nearby Martha’s Vineyard, their boat ends up capsized and both Greg and Tess are killed. The rest of the group shatters in grief, particularly Addison, who had been having a love affair with Tess, though he cannot share his particular grief with anyone. Andrea, Tess’s older sister, anoints herself the most devastated and takes immediate custody of Greg and Tess’s two children. This hurts Delilah deeply, because she knows that the kids would rather live with her–and would be better off as well. Meanwhile, their spouses follow their own journeys of grief while struggling to repair their rapidly shattering marriages.

Elin Hilderbrand is expert at limning the details of relationships, making choices for her characters that are subtle and unexpected. The Castaways‘s complex twin geographies of mourning and sexual attraction held my interest even though the only character I really connected with was Delilah. While it’s not one I am jumping up and down for, I would recommend it to someone looking for a meaty book about relationships, one with more substance than the usual beach read and with a story rich in emotions and character.

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You Make Me Feel Like Dancing by Allison Bottke

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Synopsis:
Dancing hairdresser Susan loves disco and dreams of opening a Disco Hall of Fame, but secrets from her Studio 54 past may ruin everything.

Review:
I’m totally the wrong demographic for “boomer lit,” and I never really connected with the characters in You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. I felt like the Christian aspect didn’t go very deep, with much of the God-talk feeling like Oprah-theology, not orthodox Christianity. It just was not for me.

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The Down and Dirty Dish on Revenge by Eva Nagorski

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Synopsis:
A history of revenge and handbook for “serving it up nice and cold to that lying, cheating bastard.”

Review:
Breezy and snazzy, The Down and Dirty Dish on Revenge does a lot with what seems on the surface to be a thin premise. Eva Nagorski looks at revenge in literature, through history, and across different cultures, with almost a sociologist’s eye. She peppers the book with real-life anecdotes of revenge both creative and mean-spirited. And she closes the book with a chapter on the virtues of forgiveness as the best revenge of all.

A lot of the stories that Nagorski presents don’t seem to me to be revenge per se–more like justice, if you ask me! I love it when a cheater gets his or her comeuppance, particularly in the form of a creative divorce settlement, as in the woman who won all her husband’s baseball collectibles then sold them on Ebay. I’m less a fan of the people who make sex tapes public–though I suppose the people who make sex tapes to begin with should know the risk involved.

Christian theology teaches forgiveness because even righteous anger can quickly turn sinful, and because only God can enact true justice. However, I do think it is possible to teach someone a hard lesson, if your aim is to bring them to repentance. Revenge may feel good at the time, but it will never be as satisfying as true forgiveness.

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Sister and Husbands by Connie Briscoe

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Synopsis:
On the eve of her wedding, Beverly calls things off, in turmoil over the marriage troubles her sisters have been going through.

Review:
Sisters and Husbands is a good soapy read, with lots of drama and romance, though not so much that it goes over the top. Connie Briscoe’s characters are dealing with very real issues, and she doesn’t shy away from painting them in an unflattering light. I tend to like my chick lit either more satirical or way further out there (a la Jacqueline Susann), so I’m not likely to read another of Briscoe’s books, but I did enjoy the time I spent with this one.

Oh, and as a Baltimore native, I love that it was set outside of Charm City itself!

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The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax

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Synopsis:
When novelist Kendall Ames is dropped by her publisher and her husband, she faces a case of writer’s block so severe that her best friends–also novelists–decide to help her writer her next novel and let her take all the credit.

Review:
I’m a sucker for novels about writers, because they always get me off my butt and working on my own stuff. And of course I like good chick lit, so I was primed to enjoy The Accidental Bestseller.

The plot was a strange one. Basically, Kendall fails as a novelist so her friends help her write a book about a failed novelist whose friends help her write a book. The plot of the book within the book was never specified, thankfully sparing me from too much of a hall of mirrors effect. I wasn’t sure it would work as well as it did, but Wendy Wax pulled it off.

The Accidental Bestseller wears its influences well, from The Devil Wears Prada to Olivia Goldsmith, while retaining a charm uniquely its own. Wax packed a lot of enjoyable drama into her characters but avoided seeming too soap opera-ish. At times I wished it had pushed things a bit farther (a la Goldsmith), but by the time the ending rolled around I was more than satisfied. I hope that Wax is planning more stories with these characters, because I definitely would spend more time with them.

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Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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Synopsis:
A Princeton admissions officer faces a long-buried secret in the height of application season.

Review:
The college application process, shrouded in secrecy and constructed with fuzzy logic, proved quite fascinating in Admission. Watching Portia speak to prospective students, looking over her shoulder as she read through applications, and hearing her defend a process most believe inherently unfair and corrupt perked up a book with an otherwise unimpressive plot.

Portia and her long-time boyfriend Mark have reached a crisis in their relationship, just as Portia finds herself facing the consequences of a choice made long ago. Her angst and sorrow color all her interactions and ultimately shape her outlook when choosing which students deserve Princeton.

I liked the insider’s look at the college application process, and felt that Korelitz handled tricky material well. Though it got a little preachy at times, Korelitz usually managed to bring it back to the drama at hand. However, her structuring of Portia’s emotional journey wasn’t well thought out, and by the time her secret came out I’d guessed it a million times over. Korelitz backloads too large a chunk of the story, lessening its impact when all is finally revealed. I would have liked to have seen her integrate her revelations more consistently throughout the book.

Despite my criticisms, I found Admission to be eminently readable. I’m a character junkie, and between the snippets of applications essays opening each chapter, to the students Portia encounters while touring New England, and to the central figures in the story, I was thrilled with the variety and depth of the people Korelitz created.

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Laura Rider’s Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton

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Synopsis:
A married couple starts sending love emails to a popular public radio personality, leading to tragicomic results.

Review:
In Laura Rider’s Masterpiece, Oprah-blessed Jane Hamilton’s latest protagonist is a woman who dreams of being Jane Hamilton. Laura Rider is the owner of a midwestern garden center who’s been nurturing the fantasy of becoming a writer for ages. A chance meeting with new neighbor Jenna Faroli, the host of a “Fresh Air”-type show on public radio, gives Laura the impetus to take her dreams more seriously. When a second chance meeting between Laura’s husband Charlie and Jenna leads to an email exchange, Laura decides that she should write Jenna as Charlie to see if she can create the perfect man to seduce her idol, the perfect woman. In doing so, she’ll be able to write a new kind of romance novel, one in which both lovers are equals.

Of course, Charlie knows all about Laura’s emails, and gets in on the fun, too. And, as Laura hopes, he takes the relationship to the next level. Strangely enough, Laura’s able to remain emotionally detached, because she’s thrilled about what the success of the venture says about her skills as a novelist. She’s practically picking out her outfit for Oprah.

I found myself somewhat detached from this story, even as I kept reading to see where it would go. I never connected with any of the protagonists because I didn’t really understand where they were coming from. Maybe I am just too happy in my own marriage?

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Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo

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Synopsis:
Jane Austen scholar Emma hunts Austen’s lost love letters in the hopes of restoring her besmirched academic name and to prove to the world that Austen was wrong about happy endings.

Review:
I came to Jane Austen relatively late in life. We were assigned Pride and Prejudice as summer reading in ninth grade. Honestly? It bored me to tears. For this sole reason I eschewed majoring in English in college in favor of a theater/American Studies combo just so that I could avoid British literature in general and Austen in particular.

In my late 20s I got it in my head that I wanted to “do the classics,” and picked up Sense and Sensibility. I absolutely loved it. I tore through the rest of her works, thoroughly enjoying myself. For the record, Mansfield Park is my favorite.

All this to say that I don’t quite get the Austen-mania that fuels heroines in books like Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I mean, I get being enthralled by books–that’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced–but there’s no one book or author around which I’ve shaped my life. But I certainly don’t begrudge women like Emma their infatuation with Austen, because if anyone’s worth it, she is.

Jane Austen Ruined My Life is a charming read that takes readers on a journey through Austen’s England, and, by extension, her life. In reading the book I gained a greater appreciation for her achievements, and got very excited to reread her books. Author Beth Patillo has crafted a Da Vinci Code-esque puzzle for Emma to unravel, and to her credit makes it completely plausible. While the love story isn’t going to shake the earth, I did have great sympathy for Emma’s disenchantment with romance after the failure of her marriage.

I was glad that Patillo left out some of the chick lit cliches like the meet-cute and the requisite “heroine falling down the stairs/out of a cab/into a swimming pool” clumsiness. Emma is wounded, but thoroughly capable, and that was a refreshing change from the spawn of Bridget Jones. (Not that I don’t love Bridget Jones’s Diary, I’m just tired of ersatz Bridget.)

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Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

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Synopsis:
A collection of short stories featuring Indian American protagonists.

Review:
Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake was one of my favorite books I read the year I was pregnant with Superfast Toddler, and I was so happy to get Unaccustomed Earth for Christmas this year.

What I love about Lahiri’s stories is that I never feel shortchanged by them. No matter how good a short story is, for the most part I always wish I were reading a novel instead. Short stories are too brief, too concise, to economic for me. I prefer to languish in my reading. Somehow, Lahiri manages to create short fiction that feels novelistic. I get lost in her stories, and never feel like they’ve ended too soon.

The second half of the book is a love story told in three parts: from the point of view of each of the lovers, and then in the third person as their love affair plays out. It’s basically a novella, yet each section offers its own unique satisfactions and pleasures. She captures love and passion so well, not to mention the (usually) inevitable heartbreak.

I’m teaching a college writing course this spring and planning to use one of Lahiri’s stories. I have no idea yet which one, because they’re all so marvelous. Her effortless prose style has beauty but no ostentation, but in her simplicity she captures so much complexity. I can’t think of anyone better from whom to learn the craft of fiction writing.

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