Prospect Park West

June 1, 2009
Former New York
magazine “Mating” columnist Sohn zeroes in on the more-fertile-than-thou crowd in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood in her vinegary latest (after My Old Man
). Like a Grand Hotel
for the yuppie set, the lives of moody, angry, dissatisfied mommies intersect on the playgrounds and co-ops of their overpriced hood. Among them, Lizzie, whose lesbian proclivities mask her loneliness; Rebecca, whose libidoless spouse prefers his role as dad over husband; Karen, a social-climbing conniver; and Melora, a former Manhattanite whose psychiatric maladies are as pathetic as they are numerous. The gals in this comedy of bad manners are burned out, bitchy and beyond salvation as they maneuver to be noticed and loved. Meanwhile, there’s more name-dropping than in an edition of Page Six, and while Sohn is obviously intent on skewering the annoying urban mommy stereotype, 400 pages is a stretch for material that’s been blogged to death. There are moments of brutal honesty, but they’re far too few to allow readers to muster an ounce of sympathy for a crew of caricatures so broadly drawn and sadly conceived.

July 15, 2009
The author of Run Catch Kiss (1999) gets domesticated.
In the late '90s, Sohn turned her romantic misadventures into a regular gig with New York Press and a debut novel. But what does a sex columnist do when she grows up? She gets married, moves to Brooklyn, has a kid and writes all about it, first in New York magazine's "Mating" and "Breeding" columns and now here. Sohn's first novel appeared with chick lit's first wave and earned positive reviews for being smart and edgy. Mo mmy lit was, in retrospect, the inevitable successor to all those novels about pink cocktails, designer shoes and true love, but Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It, wh ich arrived in the United States in 2002, was the simultaneous genesis and apotheosis of that genre. Sohn's latest seems more than anything like an attempt to cash in on a trend. The novel follows the intersecting liv es of four very different women. Rebecca is a freelance writer with a baby girl and a husband who is basically perfect in every way except that he no longer wants to have sex with his wife. Lizzie's commitment to attachment parenting may be at least in part a reaction to her ambivalence about her mixed-race child and his mostly absent musician father. Melora is a famous actress with an adopted son and serious problems. Karen is a stay-at-home mom, a real-estate fetishist and a total sociopath. All these women live in Park Slope, and their bemused "only in Park Slope!" observa tions are the novel's most annoying feature.
Sohn deserves recognition for addressing some rather dark issue s and for avoiding tidy conclusions, but her story would have been significantly more satisfying if she had understood that the phenomena she chronicles, from one-upmomship on the playground to the libido-less marriage, have been well documented beyond the confines of brownstone Brooklyn.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from July 15, 2009
Sohn is the ultimate New York City girl; the author of "Run Catch Kiss", she also has penned Carrie Bradshaw-esque columns for "New York" magazine and a companion guide to "Sex and the City: The Movie". In her new novel, Sohn waxes poetic about Brooklyn's gentrified Prospect Park and its yuppie residents. From an Oscar-winning actress hitting a serious slump to a pudgy, overprotective mom, Park Slope wives with young children meet up in parks, coffee shops, and the local food co-op to gossip about real estate, the actress's latest troubles, and who is/wants to be/is trying to be sleeping with whom. Lizzie, a "hasbian" (once a lesbian and now married to a black musician) meets fellow mom Rebecca, and their instant mommy friendship blossoms into something more. But Rebecca's obsession with Stuart, a local celebrity crush, gets in the way. We learn tons of juicy secrets about the characters, as Sohn weaves each individual story together beautifully. And there's celebrity name-dropping on almost every page. Verdict Sure to appeal to fans of sophisticated chick and mommy lit, this is just too much fun, and the pages turn like the wind. Bring on a sequel! [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/15/09.]Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2009
As housewives, desperate and geographically designated, are all the rage on TV, it is no surprise to see a similarly focused novel. We follow four stay-at-home mothers (or sahms) through a summer in Brooklyns trendy Park Slope: a movie star, social climber, sex kitten, and hasbian (former lesbian). Their clothes are described via labels; their children are trophies, possessions, or benchmarks; their husbands well paid. The local food co-op becomes a hotbed after a pickpocketing, eliciting fleeting racism among the politically correct. The intrigue in their lives rivals that of a middle-school lunchroom, with matching levels of self-absorption. These are not necessarily women we would identify with or even want to know, yet there is an undeniable fascination in seeing their lives unfold, refold, and perhaps crumple. While this is certainly no morality play, the lesson here might be: do not stay home with the baby; there is far too much mischief to get into. Sohn, best-selling author (My Old Man, 2004) and columnist for New York magazine, will attract many new followers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)