Although the nastiness becomes repetitive, Coll’s vicious depiction of upper-upper-middle-class suburbia is often...
Coll (Beach Week, 2010, etc.) ratchets up the level of wit and mean edginess in her newest satire, which chronicles the absurd efforts put into marketing a high-end house outside Washington D.C.
Former Swedish tennis star Lars, an obese, pill-popping basket case since knee injuries stopped his career, is financially dependent on his wife, Bella, the highly visible executive in charge of “transparency” for a troubled multinational corporation. One of those seemingly unflappable, highly competent and enviably beautiful women whose life appears disgustingly charmed, Bella stays with Lars partly for the sake of their daughter, Elsa, and partly out of guilt over a decade-old infidelity that left Elsa’s paternity clouded. While Lars and Bella spend a few days in London, where the family is relocating for Bella’s career, Elsa remains at home with a nanny. After her pet rabbit, Dominique, runs away, Elsa—precocious but troubled and terribly lonely—bonds with Eve, a stager hired by the real estate agent to spruce up the property before its open house. Like Bella, Eve is a former journalist, but unlike Bella, Eve’s career and life paths have followed downward trajectories, and she approaches her work with a large dollop of bitterness, if not bile. By the time Elsa and her parents reunite, Lars is spiraling into a serious mental breakdown, unless he really is clairvoyant and able to speak to rabbits; Bella, who may be rekindling her old affair, is exposed as a full-blooded narcissist; Elsa is as unhappy and confused as ever; and Eve is at the breaking point. Thanks to bad drugs, bad smells and spilled red paint, marketing this house is a nightmare. Coll tells her story from the points of view of everyone involved, including Dominique. In fact, Dominique may be the sanest character in the book; after causing a lingering odor problem, the rabbit escapes early.
Although the nastiness becomes repetitive, Coll’s vicious depiction of upper-upper-middle-class suburbia is often excruciatingly funny.Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-26881-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
PROFILES
The author gamely combines characters and caricatures, real pain and farce.
Can wearing the family dog in a baby sling save a troubled marriage?
“Wearing the dog is ridiculous. An act of desperation. I know this….But there is the loneliness. How I startle awake in the dark, panicked, full of dread, floating on the night sea on a tiny raft surrounded by all that vast blackness.” Once-successful author Judy Vogel is beset by problems. Her writing’s dried up, her 13-year-old son is pulling away from her, her best friend is dying of cancer, her marriage is falling apart due to her husband’s extreme anxiety issues, and hers don’t seem much less serious. As the book opens, Judy and Gary are technically separated but still living in the same house. He addresses his condition with a low-stress job and weed; she finds her solace in a never-used BabyBjörn that turns up in the basement. In goes the family sheltie!—and suddenly, somehow it all doesn’t seem so bad. Zigman (Piece of Work, 2006, etc.) is adept at Where’d You Go Bernadette–style snarkery about her son’s progressive Montessori school, her own job writing posts for a health and happiness website—“Are dogs the ultimate antidepressant?”; “If just seeing the word cannabis makes you anxious, keep reading”—and a New Age creativity retreat the couple attend. But the central premise of the novel is a bit unsettling. When Judy first puts the dog in the sling, she’s aware that it wants to get out. Soon she convinces herself it’s nice in there. From that point on she pays so little attention to the actual dog that it could be a stuffed animal. She almost doesn’t seem to care about it as a pet or as a sentient being with needs. When she’s attacked by a group of people at the dog park who charge her with animal abuse, you wonder whose side you're on.
The author gamely combines characters and caricatures, real pain and farce.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290907-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
More predictable and less profound than her most recent full-scale work (the magical A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015), but...
After a lightweight foray into rewriting Shakespeare (Vinegar Girl, 2016, etc.), Tyler returns to her tried-and-true theme of family life’s emotionally charged complexities.
Eleven-year-old Willa Drake doesn’t really understand the fraught interchanges between her volatile mother and maddeningly mild-mannered father that roil the novel’s opening chapter, set in Pennsylvania in 1967. But as the action leapfrogs to 1977 and she impulsively decides to marry college boyfriend Derek after he stands up to her mother on their first meeting, we see that, in a world of self-dramatizers and placaters, Willa has unconsciously decided to be a placater. The chapter detailing Derek’s death in a California road-rage incident in 1997 suggests that Willa’s placatory pattern is firmly set, an impression buttressed as Part II begins with 61-year-old Willa now married to Peter, another man who patronizes her and expects her to cater to his every whim. But then comes a phone call from Baltimore, where her son’s ex-girlfriend Denise has been hospitalized with a broken leg after a mysterious shooting incident by a neighbor under the mistaken impression that Denise’s daughter is Willa’s granddaughter. This brazenly schematic setup for Willa’s late-life regeneration is redeemed by the fact that it’s utterly characteristic of our maddeningly mild-mannered heroine that she not only doesn’t correct the misunderstanding, but gets on a plane to Baltimore, with Peter in tow complaining all the way. Power dynamics are never simple in Tyler’s portraits of marriage, and when Willa needs to, she quietly gets what she wants. As she gets to know Denise’s prematurely mature daughter, Cheryl, and the array of eccentric folks on their slightly seedy block—all vibrantly portrayed with Tyler’s usual low-key gusto and bracingly dark humor—readers will want Willa to see that others appreciate her sly wit and tolerant acceptance of people’s foibles as whiny Peter does not. But will she? Tyler drags out the suspense a tad longer than the slight plot merits.
More predictable and less profound than her most recent full-scale work (the magical A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015), but Tyler’s characteristic warmth and affection for her characters are as engaging as ever.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52122-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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