Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

This is one of those trendy books that pretends to both make fun of and sympathize with the wealthy urban class. What makes matters even more complicated is that the main character is not really likable. In any case, narrator Susan Denaker has a comfortable, pleasant, rich voice that, together with some subtle characterizations, keeps the story moving even under its own weight. Denaker has quite a range of emotions, as well as the ability to glide effortlessly from male to female and from child to adult without losing focus. She reads a bit too quickly at the beginning but settles down nicely as she progresses through the book. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

October 3, 2005
How a five-year-old manages to make the adults in his life hew to the love he holds for them is the sweet treat in this honest, brutal, bitterly funny slice of life. When Emelia's day-old daughter, Isabel, succumbs to SIDS, her own life stalls. She can't work; she can't sleep; Central Park, once her personal secret garden, now is a minefield of happy mother-child dyads. Since Isabel's death, husband Jack's only solace for the guilt of breaking up his sexless marriage with Carolyn for Emelia's (now-absent) passion and love is joint custody of William, now five. What Emelia cannot bear most are Wednesdays, when she must cross the park to collect William at the 92nd Street Y preschool and take another shot at stepmotherhood. Carolyn, William's furious mother and a renowned Upper East Side OB/GYN, lives to nab Emelia for mistakes in handling him. Carolyn's indicting phone calls raise the already sky-high tension in Jack and Emelia's home, but they don't compare with Carolyn's announcement that, at age 42, she is pregnant. The news pushes Emelia to confess to Jack two things she shouldn't. William is charmingly realized, and Waldman (Daughter's Keeper
) has upper bourgeois New York down cold. The result is a terrific adult story.