How to Be a Grown-up

Starred review from May 18, 2015
The 15 loosely connected stories in Beattie’s latest collection, set on Maine’s southern coast, feature drifting adults and their rootless offspring at seemingly unimportant moments that are in fact critical. In “What Magical Realism Would Be,” a high school student living with her aunt and uncle rants about summer school. “Writing essays was retarded,” Jocelyn asserts. “It totally was.” Jocelyn prefers nights on the beach with friends. “Road Movie” describes an unlucky tryst at a California hotel; “The Fledgling” shows an ungainly attempt to rescue a wayward bird; Elvis lamps are auctioned off in “The Repurposed Barn,” in which Jocelyn sees her teacher in a new light. “Adirondack Chairs” uses furniture to reflect a couple’s abandoned future; in “The Little Hutchinsons,” a wedding hosted by the titular characters goes awry. In “Missed Calls,” an encounter between a photographer’s widow and a writer distracted by concern for his stepdaughter starts with the widow’s memory of Truman Capote but becomes an unsettling view of the stepdaughter and her family. “Major Maybe,” in which a Portland doctor remembers 1980s New York, begins with a woman getting hit by a car, then weaves its way back to the narrator, her roommate, and the flower in their apartment window. The collection demonstrates Beattie’s craftsmanship, precise language, and her knack for revealing psychological truths. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

May 11, 2015
Bestselling team McLaughlin and Kraus (The Nanny Diaries) join forces again for a story their fans will recognize, with a single-mother twist. Over the span of a few days, Rory McGovern goes from feeling like she has it together to feeling like her life is exploding around her. Her husband, Blake, has just lost out on a career-changing role in a Netflix series, and as a result he has decided that he needs a vacation from marriage and parenthood. Her freelance job as a photo stylist for Stellar Media’s magazines will not become full-time as she’d hoped, and worse, her editor Kathryn wants her to go undercover at JeuneBug, a new children’s lifestyle website, to bring it down from the inside. Facing Blake’s lack of accountability and her children’s confusion over their missing father, a decisive and empowered side to Rory’s character emerges. Though the story is entertaining, the reader feels little emotional connection to the characters, or more significantly, to Rory’s situation. The novel doesn’t add anything new to the genre, and the story is predictable, but it’s nonetheless a funny and worthwhile diversion.

May 15, 2015
Ditched by her actor husband, a Manhattan mom takes a job at an Internet startup run by rude club kids with MBAs. "Did Maya touch my dream catcher?" shrills Rory McGovern's New-Age-y mother-in-law on the last day of their stay at her un-air-conditioned house outside Woodstock. This is the 10th line of the book, and if it makes you laugh, you're all set, because the Nanny Diaries authors, McLaughlin and Kraus (The First Affair, 2013, etc.), are nonstop quippers, making this amiable work of midlife chick-lit quite a hoot. Rory's husband, Blake, an actor whose picture she had on her wall as a teenager and whom she met as an undergrad at SUNY Purchase-"I will die if I don't touch him"-is now, a couple of kids into their married life in New York City, drifting away. Part of the reason for his depression is that he's not getting any work, so Rory, who's a freelance stylist for shelter magazines, has to get a full-time job. She signs on to curate the design vertical (translation: "edit the interior decorating page") at a startup called JeuneBug, which bills itself as the first high-end lifestyle website for children, as in $15,000 acrylic "snowflake beds" and sharkskin wipe dispensers. In an office where "girls of sizes were now wearing things I once would have called panties to answer phones and populate spreadsheets," Rory is tyrannized by her 20-something boss, who shrieks things like, "obviously these should be force-ranked by potential ad rev clicks." Juggling her job, her suddenly single parenting, a bit of corporate intrigue, and a few suitors-the least promising of whom is her nasty boss's 24-year-old boyfriend-Rory forges bravely through this thoroughly modern mess. Such a cupcake of a book, it feels like you're doing something more self-indulgent than reading.

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March 1, 2015
It sounds just like the setup you'd expect from the coauthors who launched their winning streak with "The Nanny Diaries". When Rory's husband loses the perfect job and decides he needs to take time off from being a husband and father (he gets a choice?), Rory finds that on top of single-handedly addressing the demands of her two children she must accept a full-time position at an upmarket lifestyle website for children--run by two fresh-from-business-school grads barely out of childhood themselves.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
The popular, prolific writing duo of The Nanny Diaries (2002) fame, McLaughlin and Kraus, authors most recently of The First Affair (2013), examine life from the perspective of a harried mom who can't afford a nanny. Rory McGovern finds herself in need of a job after her husband Blake's acting career seems to enter a tailspin. To make matters worse, Blake has started to withdraw completely from their marriage, leaving Rory on her own to care for their two children. In order to keep her family afloat, Rory takes a design job working for two twentysomething trust-fund babies who have started a company called JeuneBug, geared toward marketing high-end luxury items to children. Rory finds a way to make this absurd project succeed, but try as she might, she is unable to save her dying marriage. After a disastrous therapy session and a miserable Thanksgiving, Rory can't help but wonder if she is fit to wade back into the dating pool again. This humorous and rewarding look at one woman's second act is a smart and lively women's fiction title.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)