Friday, September 3, 2010

A Love Affair Between -- A Woman and a Park?

I seem to have become an Ayelet Waldman fan. On 7/18/10, I posted about her book on motherhood, "Bad Mother." On 7/28/10, I wrote about her novel "Red Hook Road." Now I have just finished listening (in my car, as usual) to the audio version of her novel "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits" (Random House, 2006; Books on Tape, 2006); I enjoyed it. It is set in New York; the main character, Emilia, is a Harvard-educated lawyer who is married to a man -- Jack, another lawyer -- with whom she fell head over heels in love, despite the fact that he was married when she met him. The couple suffers the tragic loss of their newborn child, and Emilia falls apart. She also has trouble with her role as stepmother to the young (ages 3-5 during the course of the novel), very precocious William, as well as with William's mother Carolyn, who is of course Jack's ex-wife. Emilia is both likable and maddening; she suffers, she is snarky, and she causes much drama, including screaming fights with various people, notably her father, whom she is still angry at because he divorced her mother a few years earlier. Emilia is a character who is so smart in so many ways, yet so blind about her relationships. I won't tell you how it all works out, but it is good reading. One aspect that sets this novel apart is Emilia's lifelong love affair with Central Park, which is not only the setting for many scenes in the novel, but a sort of main character as well. I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the park; they weren't guidebook-like, but instead blended naturally into the storytelling.
 
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