August 2007
editor August 1st, 2007
August is vacation month, the perfect time to read a non-demanding, fluffy novel or two.
Here are a few new titles well-suited to a langorous afternoon on the beach or in the hammock.
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be the girl to whom a hit song was dedicated? For instance, being the Sharona from the Knack’s My Sharona? Or Roxanne from the Police song of the same name? Maybe Sugar Magnolia if you’re a Deadhead? What would it be like if not only one song, but a best-selling artist’s entire roster of hits was about your first love, which ended when he stood you up the night of the senior prom and whom you haven’t seen since? Dedication by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss (the writing team that brought us The Nanny Diaries) begins with this premise. Kate, now a high-powered consultant living in Charleston, gets a call from her hometown best friend, telling her that Jake, the no-show ex-boyfriend, is back in town for a visit. Kate immediately flies back to Vermont to have the long-awaited showdown she has been fantasizing about for thirteen years. So what happens when she falls back under his spell? Flashbacks interspersed with the present day plot reveal Kate and Jake’s relationship from sixth grade through twelfth grade; the authors’ take on the rollercoaster of young romantic love is spot on. Pop culture references, both past and present, lend this novel much of its charm. The depiction of today’s celebrity obsessed society is also hilarious and Jake’s star antics add to the fun. My only quibble is the sub-plot concerning Kate’s parents’ marriage problems—it brings a depressing note of real life into an otherwise light and frothy novel. Despite that, if you are a fan of behind the scenes retrospectives, you’ll enjoy this story.
The Manny by Holly Peterson is set in the Manhattan of the rich and privileged. Jamie Whitfield, a news producer for a major television station, is not a native wealthy Mahattanite, but she married into the tribe ten years ago and has grown somewhat accustomed to its ways. Phillip, her attorney husband, is an absentee father whose quest for ever more money keeps him working longer and longer hours. Dylan, their oldest son, is having problems that Jamie is convinced would be solved if only he had a strong male role model. Her solution? To hire a manny, a “nanny of the male persuasion”, according to the book’s jacket. Enter Peter Bailey, a man in his late twenties who is working on an educational software package for elementary school children; he has a way with kids and could use a paying gig until his project gets the funding he needs to launch it properly. Since this is a light summer read, I am sure you can guess how the story goes—throw in a high-profile interview Jamie is trying to score, a splashy benefit she attends to help her daughter get into the best possible kindergarten, her husband’s possibly illegal activities at work, and Peter’s insistence on being a prince of a fellow, and you have a morality tale par excellence. This Manhattan comedy of manners is more Wendy Wasserstein than Edith Wharton; Edith would be rolling in her grave if she new what today’s wealthy New Yorkers were up to.The rest of us, however, will relish the skewering of their pretensions and the triumph of good, old-fashioned virtue.
Armistead Maupin is best known as the author of the Tales of the City series of books, which started as a newspaper serialization in 1974 and continued in the San Francisco Chronicle for years afterwards. His most recent novel is Michael Tolliver Lives, which is not a continuation of the Tales of the City story, but more of a coda to the characters’ lives twenty years later. Michael Tolliver is a gay man in his fifties, living in San Francisco, still missing his friends who died of AIDS, but living his life as an HIV positive man with hope and love. He has his own home, he runs his own business, and early in the novel he meets and falls in love with Ben, a man twenty years younger. As Michael negotiates aging—his own, his dying mother’s and his friends’—he begins to make his peace with his past and with his families, both biological and “logical.” Above all, this is a love story, both romantic and bawdy. If you moved beyond the young and beautiful boy meets girl story, this is a mature novel you will appreciate for its tenderness and honesty.