Of Men and Their Mothers

February 11, 2008
Medwed (How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life
) humorously if cursorily delves into a turbulent mother-in-law and daughter-in-law dynamic. Mrs. Pollock has always disdained Maisie, who was never good enough for her son, Rex, heir to the Pollock chicken pot pie fortune. But the two women’s conflicts persist even after Rex and Maisie’s divorce, as they clash over the raising of Maisie’s teenage son, Tommy, who has himself acquired a less-than-ideal girlfriend. Meanwhile, Maisie’s trying hard to get her organizing business, Factotum Inc., off the ground in the Boston area while employing another single mom locked in a custody battle with—you guessed it—her own ex-mother-in-law. Medwed adopts a breezy tone, substituting zingy one-liners (“you can’t pick battles with a battle-ax”) for genuine reflection. A reader would need her own organizing service to keep track of Factotum’s numerous eccentric clients, whose foibles are neither adequately developed nor sufficiently mined for comic potential. A frivolous, at times frantic, tone prevails, right down to the resolution of the novel’s conflicts, which turn into happy endings faster than it takes to microwave a frozen pot pie.