First You Try Everything

December 1, 2011
How will brittle, needy, fanciful Evvie cope when her husband Ben falls out of love and leaves her? Badly, is the answer, in this sensitive, offbeat second novel. We know breaking up is hard to do, but it's harder still if you are Evangeline (Evvie) Muldoone, burdened by fears of abandonment and "magnificent vulnerability." You've spent 16 happy years in Pittsburgh with Ben, variously working a pushcart together selling Middle Eastern food, laughing, sharing music, but now Ben has changed, he's no longer charmed by your preoccupation with animal rights or your tendency to procrastinate. And he's met someone else, Lauren. Switching between Evvie and Ben's perspectives, McCafferty (Thank You for the Music, 2004, etc.) captures Evvie's ditzy, thin-skinned eccentricity and Ben's cooler isolation as their lives diverge, hers deeper into dreams of making a film about a convenience-store clerk and his into more conventional happiness with Lauren. Tragi-comic in tone, the novel offers some nicely observed insights into guilt and despair—"He was tired of the prison of his old affection"—until heartbreak and delusion lead to an act of lunacy that will redefine the landscape. Everyday tragedy takes a surreal spin in this slight but soulful, idiosyncratic tale.

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December 1, 2011

A childless, long-married couple, Evvie and Ben have always lived an unconventional lifestyle. But when Ben gets a good job that requires him to wear a suit and tie, he is surprised to note his comfort at joining the mainstream. Evvie's strident animal-rights activism and musical obsessions start to get on his nerves. Ben has always been the caretaker in the relationship as Evvie is both psychologically fragile and accident-prone. When Ben meets the calm and nurturing Lauren, he realizes his marriage with Evvie is no longer sustainable. Stunned, Evvie falls prey to a dangerous scheme to get Ben back. Skillfully told from both Ben's and Evvie's viewpoints, McCafferty's second novel (after One Heart) coins its own brand of heart-searing suspense. Can this marriage be saved? VERDICT Fans of Anne Tyler, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and other top-drawer domestic fiction writers will enjoy this unpredictable, offbeat novel.--Keddy Outlaw, formerly with Harris Cty. P.L., Houston, TX

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2011
Short story writer McCafferty's second novel (after One Heart, 1999) is a quirky yet deeply moving portrait of the dissolution of a marriage. Years of infertility treatments have turned 41-year-old Evvie into a strident activist, while Ben has found great contentment in the routine and rewards of his nine-to-five job testing and selling medical equipment, even finding himself enjoying the way it felt to glide down the street in a coat and tie. Once so close, drawn together by their painful childhoods, idealism, and love of music, the two now circle each other with a certain wariness, as Evvie desperately tries to bridge the gulf between them, and Ben is increasingly attracted to a woman with whom he works ( Unlike Evvie, she still believed in the custom of sitting down for dinner ). When Ben moves out, Evvie becomes increasingly unstable, eventually hatching a bizarre scheme to get Ben back. Although McCafferty's plot goes off the rails in spots, her novel offers many heartrending scenes illuminating the pain of separation, both for the one leaving and the one left.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)