Medwed’s signature wit does not overcome the vapid, overly sanguine plot.
Mothers-in-law are the villains in the newest comedy from Massachusetts resident Medwed (How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, 2006, etc.).
As the novel opens, narrator Maisie is trying to decide what to do with a container of frozen breast milk that has been left in her freezer. The milk belongs to ex-boyfriend lawyer Jack’s pro bono client Darlene, whose ex-mother-in-law is suing for custody of Darlene’s 15-month-old son. When Jack asks Maisie to hire Darlene as an assistant at her company, Factotum Inc., how can she refuse? After all, Maisie’s own marriage to Rex, heir to a frozen-chicken business, failed largely because Rex could not stand up to his overbearing mother, who has always been “Mrs. Pollock” to Maisie. Now Mrs. Pollock is trying to horn in on Maisie’s 16-year-old son Tommy. Maisie herself isn’t too crazy about Tommy’s new girlfriend September, especially when the kids announce that since September’s mother—a true no-good mom—has kicked her out, she’s moving in with Tommy and Maisie. Then Mrs. Pollock finds a baggie of mysterious white powder while searching Tommy’s backpack. At the hospital where Maisie takes the bag (the powder turns out to be gumdrop residue), she meets social worker Gabe. Gabe is a mama’s boy too, but luckily for Maisie, his mother is dead. Soon Maisie does some parenting of her own: She demands that September stay in school. September agrees. In fact, she embraces it, explaining that all she has ever wanted is a mother to give her advice. Meanwhile, Darlene is proving an excellent worker. At the custody hearing Maisie attends with Darlene to offer moral support, Darlene and her mother-in-law spar only briefly before finding common ground in their love for baby Anthony. The ease of resolution is as difficult to believe as Maisie’s attraction to bland Gabe.
Medwed’s signature wit does not overcome the vapid, overly sanguine plot.Pub Date: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-083121-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.
Named for an imperfectly worded fortune cookie, Hoover's (It Ends with Us, 2016, etc.) latest compares a woman’s relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she’s infertile.
Quinn meets her future husband, Graham, in front of her soon-to-be-ex-fiance’s apartment, where Graham is about to confront him for having an affair with his girlfriend. A few years later, they are happily married but struggling to conceive. The “then and now” format—with alternating chapters moving back and forth in time—allows a hopeful romance to blossom within a dark but relatable dilemma. Back then, Quinn’s bad breakup leads her to the love of her life. In the now, she’s exhausted a laundry list of fertility options, from IVF treatments to adoption, and the silver lining is harder to find. Quinn’s bad relationship with her wealthy mother also prevents her from asking for more money to throw at the problem. But just when Quinn’s narrative starts to sound like she’s writing a long Facebook rant about her struggles, she reveals the larger issue: Ever since she and Graham have been trying to have a baby, intimacy has become a chore, and she doesn’t know how to tell him. Instead, she hopes the contents of a mystery box she’s kept since their wedding day will help her decide their fate. With a few well-timed silences, Hoover turns the fairly common problem of infertility into the more universal problem of poor communication. Graham and Quinn may or may not become parents, but if they don’t talk about their feelings, they won’t remain a couple, either.
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7159-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
