Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Review
Full Disclaimer: I'm about fifty pages from the end. And, there are spoilers below.
This book has amazing writing. The first 100 or so pages were probably the strongest opening pages of a novel that I've read in a good, long while. I especially love the delineation of Central Park.
Some things are beginning to bother me:
1. The fact that so many plot points depend on the heroine's seemingly unending inability to get a cab in New York City.
2. The fact that "handsome" men fall for the heroine far too easily (Near the end, she starts reading a book in a cafe and before you can say "lickety-split", a handsome man approaches to strike up a conversation. Perhaps this does happen in real life. But I got the feeling the handsome man approaching the heroine was meant to signal some knowledge -- of her own desirability in spite of everything? Oh, this is veering dangerously close to cliché)
3. Her stepson is an unlikable kid (who self actually LIKED) but his last actions (which precipiate novel's main crisis) are totally "Deus ex machina."
4. The heroine still buys books on "Step-Parenting," after unlikable child has engineered unlikely crisis. What, what is she doing? I want to scream.
Aaargh! I can actually FEEL the author trying to end, end, end! Of course, I realize the novel could not be one long meditation on being "the other woman," some crisis needed to occur, but at this point in the book the characters are beginning to act in truly bizarre ways.
(Am still giving it four stars, because of the spots of amazing writing. Thanks to Ms. Waldman, I will never look at Central Park the same way, ever again)
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Overview
In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.
Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.
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Customer Reviews
A mixed read - worth it for some - SHR - Melbourne, Australia
I'll preface this with - there is a spoiler in this review & my review is not based on any of the so-called controversy about the author and her honesty, I haven't read any of that stuff!
I had mixed feelings about this book, mostly I found it well written and there were some lovely moments but it moved into melodrama a few times and relies heavily on clichés for support characters (the overbearing bitchy ex-wife, the gay best friend, a womanising father, a sanctimonious sister, a put upon mother, a smarter than smart 5 year old step-son...), and that meant it was hard for me to be completely lost in the story.
I was also a little annoyed as the cover sells it as a humourous look at a young women trying to deal with being a step-mother to a child she doesn't really love, even though she assumes she would as she loves his father so much. It is really about Emilia dealing with the loss of her 2 day old daughter to SIDS, while also navigating life (which includes relationships with friends, family, her step-son, his mother and her husband), and as it is a book, she ends up loving the step-son and him her, and they save each other in a sense; the end is such a let-down and so trite in many ways it ruins the good stuff that has come before.
While I felt for Emilia, I also found I wanted to slap her for her level of self-involvment and that made it hard for me to care about her transformation, or to find it believable.
I also found it highly improbable that Emilia's husband and father came to the same conclusions about her hidden motivations for her relationship to her husband within a week or so of each other and really they both didn't need to voice that opinion; if the author felt the reader would think it was rubbish from the husband, make the Dad say it and have the husband agree with it and expand on it once Emilia tells him about the father's comments, or some other variation - just don't bash the reader over the head with the same Freudian solution twice!
nice story, pretentious writing style - rk from ny - ny, of course
If you can get past the pretentious writing style, the book is worth reading for the story line and characters.
A Page-Turner - Thomma Lyn - East Tennessee
This book is well-written and in places quite funny. The main character, a woman who struggles with being a stepmother and who just lost her infant daughter to SIDS, is by turns sympathetic, then annoyingly self-absorbed. And I wanted to beat her husband with a Clue Bat because he had ridiculously unrealistic expectations of his wife in a difficult and painful situation. But the characterization makes for a stew of angst and drama, hence my quick turning of pages to see what would happen next.
My favorite character is William, the precocious and smart-alecky stepson. To my mind, William is the star of this story.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 25, 2010 08:36:12
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