I Regret Everything

October 13, 2014
Jeremy Best, a lawyer by day, also moonlights as a poet under the name Jinx Bell, publishing occasionally (if implausibly) in The Paris Review. Spaulding, a 19-year-old woman who's a fan of Bell's poems, figures out that the writer behind them is Jeremy, who happens to be working in her father's Manhattan law firm. The restless and unpredictable Spaulding playfully pursues Jeremy. In alternating chapters, Jeremy and Spaulding reveal their respective perspectives on the unfolding events, so that readers learn of their private struggles, including a particularly tragic shock for Jeremy he initially tries to keep secret. Greenland (The Angry Buddhist), a former writer for the TV show Big Love, has a clear and snappy handle on the New York City worlds of M.F.A.s, M.F.A. dropouts, and poetry workshops, as well as their counterpoint in the Sutton Place penthouses of Jeremy's wealthy clients. This much is convincing and entertaining early on, though one does question the whole premise, which has been done so many times before: why must the 30-something lawyer find vibrancy and renewal in a teenage girl? As the second half of the novel slides into chaos and Jeremy and Spaulding consummate their relationship, investment in either character becomes tough to maintain. While Greenland is attempting an earnest, serious meditation on love or art or mortality, the book often feels like a silly romantic comedy that can't escape its genre.

December 1, 2014
What begins as a lighthearted love story and comedy of manners comes to encompass suicide attempts, mental institutions, death, broken families, legal transgressions and a possible killing.Greenland's fourth novel (The Angry Buddhist, 2012, etc.) has two protagonists, and the chapters alternate between their first-person accounts. Jeremy Best is a 33-year-old financial lawyer on the fast track to partnership, with a sideline as a published poet under the name Jinx Bell. Spaulding Simonson is a 19-year-old student with a history of mental instability and a passion for poetry. When she walks into Jeremy's office and lets him know she (somehow) knows he's Jinx, there are immediate sparks between them. He finds her attractive-and then some: "[H]er hair, the burnished gold found on coins and in youth and thereafter in bottles, fell in thick ringlets over her shoulders and down the middle of her back in the manner of a silent movie ingenue." He thinks she's flirting with him and learns that she's the daughter of his boss, the senior partner who will decide his professional fate, which should be enough to make him steer clear. But if he was able to resist her allure, there wouldn't be a novel. Spaulding is somehow more mature and less innocent, though she idealizes Jeremy as much as he does her: "Here was someone with a goal and a plan. He had a job where he made money and an art life, too. I wanted to know what he knew." There are other characters (the father, of course, and Jeremy's rivals on the partner track), but they're bit players, with Jeremy and Spaulding sharing the spotlight. He believes, or desperately wants to, that "[h]er soul was as old as the elements." She sees him as someone who "seemed to have it figured out." Some of the complications that ensue are predictable, but others are so dark it remains a challenge for the author to retain his light touch.

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March 1, 2015

Having dropped his pursuit of an MFA following an indiscretion that earned him the eternal hatred of his adviser, Jeremy Best works as a trusts and estates attorney at a prestigious law firm. But he stills publishes poetry under the name Jinx Bell, and Spaulding Simonson, daughter of the firm's managing partner, has discovered his secret. She's interested in poetry herself and, ignoring her own admonition that at 33 Jeremy is halfway to dead, draws nearer. What might have been an upper-class comedy of manners about a prickly affair turns sober with Jeremy's illness and the weight of Spaulding's past. VERDICT Author of The Angry Buddha, Greenland writes smoothly and absorbingly, and readers will skim along gratefully with him.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
Although there are many reasons Jeremy and Spaulding should keep apart, a shared love of poetry draws them together. At 33, trusts-and-estates attorney Jeremy has traded many of his literary aspirations for a steady income, but he retains a poetic and generous soul, dashing off $500 checks to charity. His boss' daughter, 19-year-old Spaulding, is looking to use the power of verse to find her way after a mental breakdown and turns to Jeremy as her guide. Their interactions crackle from the start, and although Jeremy in particular realizes how inadvisable a relationship would be, it proves irresistible. Greenland hits all the right notes for this fledgling romanceattraction, uncertainty, self-consciousnessas the main characters tell the story in distinctive voices. His playful, well-crafted writing captures personality or atmosphere in a few phrases, and the characters' self-assessments reveal the rich inner lives driving their actions. Their love comes from the mind as much as the heart, in a poignant story of dreams and the way they can crash into the reality of the dreamers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)