The Big Love

Allison Hopkins is a 21st-century urban neurotic, a former evangelical Christian whose live-in boyfriend has left her for another woman. Her anger, her religious confusion, and her maudlin desperation for a happy ending are the troublesome trivia she tries to sort through. Narrator Eliza Foss has a pleasant reading style and an impressive vocal range for characterizations. She attempts to keep things upbeat, although the lack of subtleties in the text forces Foss to work a little too hard. The result is a performance that is frequently over the top. Some genuinely funny writing laces this cross between "Friends" and "Sex in the City," but if it's true that there's nothing more important to 30-something women than procreation, then the Women's Movement was a big bust. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 10, 2004
The annals of love have recorded many a humiliating breakup over the years, but Alison Hopkins gets hit with a humdinger in this surprising, touching and hilariously deadpan debut novel. When she sends her live-in boyfriend Tom to the supermarket right before a dinner party, she figures the worst that can happen is that he'll get the wrong mustard. Instead he calls from a pay phone to tell her he's not coming back at all, because he's fallen in love with his college sweetheart, Kate Pearce—with whom he's been sleeping for five months. If Alison were a Sex and the City
siren, she'd distract herself with martinis, Manolos and misappropriated men, but she's a broke columnist for the floundering weekly The Philadelphia Times
. Plus, though now lapsed, she was raised evangelist Christian. So it's a new pair of hiking boots, pie-contest judging and furtive dalliances with a coworker for reluctant good-girl Alison as she tries to gauge the ins and outs of the single world that non-fundamentalists mastered in their early 20s. Alison's struggles to fit into the mainstream world are fresh and full of wisdom, and Dunn's humor is marvelously dry: "Bonnie had a sudden flash of what he might come up with on his own…so she drew a picture on a cocktail napkin of a wide band of channel-set diamonds, and she wrote down the words 'platinum' and 'size six' and 'BIG' and 'SOON.' " This is a delightful exploration of the empowerment that comes from escaping a Big Love turned Bad Love. 5-city author tour.
Agent, Nicholas Ellison.

August 2, 2004
When Alison Hopkins's live-in boyfriend, Tom, leaves mid-dinner party to buy mustard and then calls to say he's never coming back, she doesn't know who to blame: Tom, for falling back in love with his old girlfriend Kate Pearce; Kate, for clouding his mind with her seductive charms; or herself, for being a lapsed Evangelist Christian living, as her mother would say, "in sin." So Alison decides to distribute the blame, reserving a large portion for herself. It's hard not to sympathize with Alison as she struggles to salvage her life and her column-writing career, but Foss's exaggerated narration doesn't do this funny, insightful and mildly neurotic protagonist justice. Foss's robust voice cycles from nearly inaudible to ear-ringingly loud. Although she sometimes uses different inflections to convey Alison's emotions, she more often uses volume, which will frustrate listeners who don't want to keep their fingers trained on the volume control. Foss also struggles with her male impersonations; curiously, all her male characters come off sounding like they have head colds. Although Dunn's tale possesses both wit and charm, this audio adaptation would have benefited from a subtler treatment. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Forecasts, May 10).