Rise and Shine

Meghan Fitzmaurice is the socialite star of the morning TV show from which the novel takes its name, a woman who knows about everything but failure. That's how she sounds. Failure is the life's work of social worker Bridget Fitzmaurice. And that's how she sounds. They are sisters, and yet Carol Monda allows you to hear their differences in tone and syntax. More surprisingly, Monda is also convincing as Tequila, the black, busty, bossy secretary at Women On Women (WOW) where Bridget works. Told explosively in today's clipped vernacular, this beautifully performed novel exhibits the attention to detail for which Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are justly famous. It's a cross between a thriller and a novel of manners. Or rather, it's a thrilling novel of manners. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

June 26, 2006
Bridget Fitzmaurice, the narrator of Quindlen's engrossing fifth novel, works for a women's shelter in the Bronx; her older sister, Meghan, cohost of the popular morning show Rise and Shine
, is the most famous woman on television. Bridget acts as a second mother to the busy Meghan's college student son, Leo; Meghan barely tolerates Bridget's significant other, a gritty veteran police detective named Irving Lefkowitz. After 9/11 (which happens off-camera) and the subsequent walking out of Meghan's beleaguered husband, Evan, Meghan calls a major politician a "fucking asshole" before her microphone gets turned off for a commercial, and Megan and Bridget's lives change forever. As Bridget struggles to mend familial fences and deal with reconfigurations in their lives wrought by Meghan's single phrase, Quindlen has her lob plenty of pungent observations about both life in class-stratified New York City and about family dynamics. The situation is ripe with comic potential, which Bridget deadpans her way through, and Quindlen goes along with Bridget's cool reserve and judgmentalism. The plot is very imbalanced: a couple of events early, then virtually nothing until a series of major revelations in the last 50 or so pages. The prose is top-notch; readers may be more interested in Quindlen's insights than in the lives of her two main characters.

December 1, 2006
Orphaned in childhood, sisters Meghan and Bridget have grown up to be pillars in each other's lives. Meghan, a nationally known television personality hosting "Rise and Shine", the nation's number one morning show, lives a cushy celebrity life. Younger sister Bridget toils in a modest, sometimes dispiriting career as a social worker. Meghan is married with a personable teenaged son; Bridget lives with a jaded, crusty cop who doesn't want kids. Meghan suffers a fall from grace after a muttered profanity into a live microphone shocks the nation. Her plunge into public disgrace triggers both sisters' soul searching and realigns their lives. The New York City backdrop allows Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and "Newsweek" columnist Quindlen to wield her powers of observation and description to establish a true sense of place. Actress Carol Monda's clear, nontheatrical diction is unobtrusive, casting the spotlight on the narrative. Recommended for public libraries.Judith Robinson, Univ. at Buffalo, NY

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.