WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH
by Ruth Pennebaker
Pennebaker’s first novel attempts to join the recession-hit chic-lit mini-boomlet with her comedy about an Austin, Texas, divorcée struggling to live under one roof with her adolescent daughter and aging mother.
About to turn 50, Joanie has still not fully adjusted to her divorce two years earlier from lawyer Richard. In fact, she’s sworn off sex all together. Given that this is supposedly a book about hard times, Joanie’s financial situation, even how much Richard is paying in child support, remains vague. After having unbelievably little trouble getting an ad-agency job after years as a stay-at-home mom, she evinces only disdain for the actual work, not to mention her much younger colleagues, and only limited concern over job security. Meanwhile, her personal life is one irritation after another. Her 15-year-old daughter Caroline has turned typically adolescent: impatient, hostile, secretive and mildly rebellious. Not so much unpopular as invisible to her high-school peers, Caroline experiments with cigarettes, pot and wildly dyed hair but remains basically a good girl. Joanie’s aging mother Ivy, who has had to leave her West Texas home and move in with Joanie for financial reasons, is outspoken in disparaging both daughter and granddaughter, and although she’s supposed to be a reactionary shrew, her criticism seems pretty accurate. Her intolerance covers aching loneliness, and the novel’s best scene occurs when Caroline and her only friend bake pot brownies that Ivy devours à la mode. As Ivy’s health fails, Joanie’s brother, Ivy’s blatant favorite, doesn’t visit or lift a finger to help. Richard announces that his much younger girlfriend is expecting a baby and then is out of town on business the rest of the novel. Pennebaker’s male characters are so undeveloped that even in their villainy they seem irrelevant. The novel’s one half-decent guy, Joanie’s co-worker, becomes a lukewarm love interest at best. Eventually, of course, female camaraderie is achieved among the three generations.
Neither funny nor insightful enough to rise above the crowd of similar plots.