CRITIC'S CHOICE
REVIEWED BY SUE CORBETT
NONFICTION
In this provocative examination of the economic pitfalls facing stay-at-home moms, Bennetts warns career women against "opting out" to bring up baby. Haunted by the financial straits that faced her grandmother, whose husband left her for his mistress, and her mother, who returned to work after Bennetts's father lost his job, the author never considered quitting her job as a journalist after having two kids. But she became increasingly concerned by a trend among educated women to resign from paid work and rely on men to support them. In an era of divorce, vanishing pensions and longer life spans, it's "too risky," she writes, "to count on anyone else to support you over the long haul."
New divorce laws have made lifetime alimony rare. Women trying to work again after years away find their skills are sorely out of date. Those who worry about kids whose moms work have the real danger inverted: A "more realistic fear," one expert says, "is what happens if the husband dies, leaves you or loses his job, and you have no earning power." The book's cover, showing a house of cards, is a spot-on metaphor for Bennetts's contention that taking the mommy track is risky business. This sobering read is her clarion call for those considering it to think twice.
By Lore Segal
REVIEWED BY FRANCINE PROSE
NOVEL
When Ilka Weisz is invited to teach at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, she fears that she will feel like a refugee, exiled from her friends and family in New York. The 13 interconnected stories that make up Lore Segal's sharply perceptive, enchanting and touching new book follow Ilka's progress as she slowly becomes absorbed in the rivalries and alliances, the intrigues and heartbreaks, and the hopes and disappointments of her new colleagues, including the institute's director Leslie Shakespeare and his wife, Eliza.
The casual quality of Ilka's early exchanges and encounters at Concordance deepens as her experiences there include marriage, the birth of a child, the deaths of people she cares for and a passionate and sustaining love affair—and as Segal explores the nature of community, what it means to be part of a group and how we form that dense, intricately knotted web of human relationships that define who we are and how we live in the world.
By Sarah Thyre
REVIEWED BY MICHELLE GREEN
MEMOIR
Sarah Thyre's favorite Barbie was a skanky castoff rescued from a garage sale. In her feisty, sometimes hilarious memoir, Thyre recalls that "poor Barbie" lived in a pretend one-room house and ate ketchup sandwiches; her daughter, a Skipper whose toes Thyre cut off with a hole-punch, never complained. Instead, Skipper told visitors, "My mother burned my toes off with a Bunsen burner in a fit of rage triggered by malnutrition."
In real life, Thyre and her four siblings took plenty of their own knocks. The author and actress (Strangers with Candy) describes a family dominated by a cheapskate failure of a dad and a cheerful but impotent mom who performs sleight of hand with a BankAmericard. In small-town Louisiana, where they move from rental house to mold-infested rental house in the '70s, a better life always seems beyond their grasp. Does Thyre complain? Only a little. Brilliantly observed and remarkably humane, Dark is a charmer.
By Paula Deen with Sherry Suib Cohen
REVIEWED BY JOANNA POWELL
MEMOIR
"Hang with me," Deen cracks in her tasty tell-all, "and even if you're from New Jersey, you'll be lovin' grits." At the very least, readers will be lovin' this ruin-to-riches story from the queen of butter-and-mayo cuisine. In her signature bubbly, down-home drawl, Food Network star and cookbook author Deen depicts her desperate days as a struggling mom with two kids, her debilitating battle with agoraphobia and her eventual rebirth as a successful restaurateur in Savannah. She spills some "hard secrets," confessing to bad parenting, an affair with a married man and—gasp!—still smoking, but her honesty is winning. Now about those grits....
By Jonathan Lethem
REVIEWED BY VICK BOUGHTON
FICTION
This is the story of a fledgling L.A. rock band, a stolen kangaroo and a mysterious guy known as the complainer because he often phones into a complaint line manned by one of the band members. But the gripe line is fake, a conceptual art project much like the party thrown by a promoter who asks the group to play their instruments quietly while guests wearing headphones dance to music they brought with them. Author of 1999's Motherless Brooklyn, Lethem is a wicked satirist, here slicing up L.A. hipsters, smarmy music execs and rudderless twentysomethings. It's an exhilarating ride through a weird yet recognizable landscape.
"The only thing I regret, as a working mother," Bennetts writes, is the "energy I wasted on feeling guilty"
WHY DID YOU WRITE THE BOOK? Staying home with your kids is always being discussed as a lifestyle choice, but it has huge financial ramifications. I've seen the wreckage—why isn't anybody warning young women? We need a Paul Revere!
HAS YOUR DAUGHTER READ IT? Oh, yes. And while I was writing it, my husband found himself out of a job for six months. There couldn't have been a clearer illustration for my children [Nicholas, 15, and Emily, 18, right] about why women have to work.
YOUR KIDS DON'T LOOK SCARRED Research shows children whose moms work are better socialized—and more likely to do housework themselves! When a husband and wife share the work and the domestic load, everybody benefits.
Lizabeth Zindel
Recognize the name? Dad Paul wrote the coming-of-age classic The Pigman. Now Lizabeth, 30, an ex Hollywood assistant, debuts with a novel about a teen interning for a Lindsay Lohan-like star.
OKAY, SO DO YOU KNOW LINDSAY LOHAN? I don't. But people stop me and tell me I look like her.
HOW MUCH OF THE BOOK IS TRUE? I was getting lattes for my boss at Maverick Entertainment while I was writing. I did pull from my experiences, but it's up to the reader to figure out.
ARE YOU HAPPY TO CONTINUE THE FAMILY TRADITION? I love it. It's like the 1800s, where if your father was a cobbler, then you'd make shoes too. My dad [who died in 2003] was always talking about plot and structure at dinner or on road trips. I feel closest to him when I'm writing.
THINK YOUR BOOK COULD BECOME A CLASSIC TOO? I do pressure myself to live up to his precedent—it makes me work harder. I think he'd be very proud.
HOPES AND DREAMS: THE STORY OF BARACK OBAMA by Steve Dougherty: This photo-filled bio offers up intimate moments in the presidential hopeful's life—from his stint as a varsity basketball player in high school to the early days with his future wife, Michelle.
THE BLONDE THEORY by Kristin Harmel: Harmel's second novel follows a successful New York City attorney who tries to camouflage her smarts—and play up the giggling—to attract a date after her boyfriend dumps her for putting her career first.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
