CONDITIONS OF LOVE
by Ruth Pennebaker
Sarah’s hard-drinking, charismatic father has been dead for close to a year when this aptly titled novel from Pennebaker (Don’t Think Twice, 1996, etc.) opens.
A social nonentity in her ritzy school, Sarah and her earnest best friend, Ellie, spend their afternoons writing letters to the governor, begging him to spare death-row inmates. Sarah, still coming to terms with her grief, has recently grown weary of serious issues and dreary causes; moreover, she’s tired of Ellie’s sad-sack personality and her self- absorbed, dysfunctional family. Sarah wants to grow up, figure out how to get Ben to like her the way she likes him, and have some fun for a change. In the course of this intelligent, touching novel, she does just that, guiltily jettisoning Ellie for a new best friend, and reaching out to her crush. More significantly, she forges a new understanding with her mother, and discovers that the love she felt for her father was real even though he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
Although the story offers no real surprises, the author’s amusing first-person account and eye for detail keep the narrative consistently engaging; setting Pennebaker’s novel apart from the pack is the very specific behaviors and warty humanness of the adroitly drawn characters. (Fiction. 11-14)