Trophy House

Cape Cod is shown at its best as the background for Dannie Faber's life as an illustrator of children's books. The quality of daylight and the winds and the silence after the summer people leave are her euphoria. Then someone builds a monster trophy house down the road, and Dannie's happiness starts falling away. Celeste Lawson reads as if she is telling her own story. Her manner is reserved, as if she is holding back the desire to let her feelings fly, and that restraint allows the listeners to judge the characters for themselves, making the listening experience a very personal time. J.P. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

June 13, 2005
Is there an impulse stronger than lust—real estate lust, that is—for the comfortably middle-aged? Maybe not, teases Bernays (Professor Romeo
, etc.) in this astute, witty romance, beguilingly set in the Cape Cod towns of Truro and Provincetown. Dannie Faber, a successful illustrator of children's books, is so attached to her beach house that she lives there April to November—even though she's frequently separated from husband Tom, a "gentle and distracted" MIT professor. It's a year after 9/11, and Dannie's Truro house has become a haven in a world where "civilization had cracked, setting people and events off in wild spinning." But then crass hotelier Mitch Brenner constructs a "monster house" distressingly nearby—and somebody writes "Jew Pig" in red paint (or is it blood?) on his front door. As Dannie and best friend Raymie speculate about the wrongdoer, readers may expect the plot to focus on the crime. But Bernays switches gears: Dannie turns inward as her marriage falls apart and she begins an affair with her New York editor; floundering daughter Beth moves back home; and Brenner makes a surprising alliance with Raymie. Though the plot is a bit untidy, readers will bond with Bernays's prickly, opinionated, bighearted heroine. Agent, Sterling Lord.

March 1, 2006
In a romance novel that may successfully prove more a love of geography than people, Bernays uses Cape Cod landscapes and traditional native Northeastern sensibilities as a backdrop to a work that hints at deeper issues. Children -s book illustrator Dannie Faber -s artistically enjoyable world of Truro, MA, is upset by the monstrosity of Mitch Brennan -s showcase house under construction next door. This opens up a number of personal dilemmas in her family life as both she and her husband, Tom, seek love outside their marriage. Her subsequent affair with one of her editors never rings as true as her sense of fulfillment in her coastal retreat. The subplots of hate crimes and flaunting one -s wealth in -trophy houses - are less developed in this thin novel than the title may suggest. Read by Celeste Lawson, this is recommended for larger fiction collections only." -Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY"

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