Summer Reading

Anyone who's ever lived in the New York area knows only too well the hoity-toity world of women who summer in the Hamptons. In this memorable little tour de force, Wolitzer fleshes them out, and Isabel Keating gives each one a distinctive voice, almost, but not quite, ironic. The story focuses on three women whose paths cross one summer--Lissy, a trophy second wife; Michelle, Lissy's summer maid; and Angela, a retired college professor who agrees to lead a book group. The setting is peopled with tony summer ladies, husbands who show up on Friday nights, blue-collar locals, and rich, bored children. As Angela tries to inspire the book group to embrace the benefits of reading "great books" and Lissy struggles with her dyslexia as she tries to read them, the lives of the main characters take on the very crises and high emotion dramatized in literature. What a delight! R.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

March 19, 2007
The eighth novel from Wolitzer (The Doctor's Daughter
) opens as Alyssa (Lissy) Snyder—trophy second wife, reluctant stepmom, and major dyslexic—hosts a summer book discussion group. She's hoping to catch the attention of Ardith Templeton, who initiated the group and who, with her husband Larry, commands center stage in the tony Hamptons social scene. Retired English professor Angela Graves conducts the group, assigns the readings and tries to inspire her charges to take life lessons from the likes of Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary. Lissy gamely tries to read enough pages (or search out enough online commentary) to appear prepared—but Ardith rarely shows up. Meanwhile, Lissy's husband dotes on his children and begins spending time with his first wife. First-person chapters alternate among Lissy, Angela (who picks over old regrets), and Michelle Cutty, a young local who works as Lissy's summer maid and who provides some class-based frisson. There are small pleasures, but the trio of pretty endings is too hurried (and in Lissy's case too unearned) to be satisfying.