Customer Reviews

Any Place I Hang My Hat: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

.....since author Susan Isaacs penned her "Compromising Positions" yarn about a middle-aged suburban housewife. In THAT book, which may seem ordinary today, Isaacs broke
a lot of rules. She wrote about the suburban mom vs. working woman in a manner that poked fun at both. She let her heroine have an adulterous fling, and, somehow, it seemed
all right in a day and age when the sexual revolution was just something hippies were involved in. Over the years, in nine novels (ten, now!) Isaacs has given me much pleasure and literally has me stop and say more than once throughout each book-"that's happened to me...". My personal favorite of Isaac's novels is "After All These Years", but, then, I never met an Isaacs novel I didn't love.

I credit Susan Isaacs with starting the "chick lit" era, and she is a master. Her novels don't just make light of women facing issues, they generally are themed for a woman who is just discovering a whole lot about herself that she never knew. "Any Place I Hang My Hat" is no exception, although the heroine, Amy Lincoln (a 30-something Jewish-Italian New Yorker from the slums, with a missing mother who walked off and left her and a father ("Chicky") who has lived a life incarcerated, on and off)doesn't realize right away that she's destined to try to find her true self.

Naturally, Amy's used her wits and her knack for hard work and fitting in to go first to an exclusive boarding school, all expenses paid, then on to Harvard and Columbia to study journalism. She's a political writer for "In Depth" - a quality magazine with an educated following, and she's been involved for more than two years with a documentary
filmmaker, John Orenstein. She's got a longer relationship, for a decade and a half, with rich, exotic Tatty, her best
friend. The two met in boarding school when Tatty insulted her and Amy retaliated by punching her in the mouth. Tatty naturally does not have to work for a living, but chose a career in gourmet occasion cake making, after her two marriages failed. Isaacs normally draws me in with a more middle-aged heroine, but in the brilliant little journey that Amy makes to find herself in the novel, we quickly learn that she has an old soul.

Involved in the early part of the Democratic run for a presidential candidate, with a clever mix of real and imagined candidates, Amy's struck by the parallel between a young Hispanic man who crashes a fund-raiser, claiming the blueblooded Senator who is running for office is his father. Amy's own life has been lived trying not to speculate on why and how her mother, Phyllis, left her in the care of crazy Grandma Lil and jailbird Chicky. Phyllis never once looked back, and Amy has to decide - does she want to find Phyllis and find the answers to all those questions or is it just safer to leave the genie in the bottle?

Interspersed with the quest for her identity are the often humorous anecdotes of Amy's struggle with editorial control at the magazine, and her on and off again romance
with John. Warning: there is a broken heart that really leaves you feeling bereft in this novel.

In the concluding chapters, I will admit to tears, because Isaacs truly engaged me in her character, and never went over-the-top for her laughs. Indeed, Isaacs practices wit more than humor, romance more than sexual heat, and contemporary writing more than groundbreaking plotting. Reviewing the above, you may yawn and think it's just another plot that's been done before, but you haven't counted on Isaacs' style and way with a phrase or a concept. Here she has Amy assess her life:

"I could fit in anywhere: With all the kids on the bus going upstate to visit their fathers in prison. With all the Ivey girls and the guys they hung with. In a government seminar at Harvard. Drinking with the Democratic powers-that-be in Chicago. Except when you could theoretically live a thousand different lives, how do you pick the one where you belong?"

Join Isaacs and Amy for a journey of discovery, and enjoy the wit, charm, warmth, and ultimately and unfortunately, the end of a smart new novel. Isaacs only averages
one novel every 2.5 years. That's way too few with too much space between them, for my taste. Thus, I pay full price whenever I see she's got a new one on the shelves....believe me, "Any Place I Hang My Hat", was worth every penny!

Enjoy it!

This was a very compelling and intelligent read that I would recommend to anyone who would enjoy an intelligent tale of a woman's personal growth. (I received this book as a Christmas present, and I am so grateful that someone finally understood my tastes in reading material!)

Amy's story is memorable -- she was abandoned by her mother as an infant, and raised by her delusioned, neglectful paternal grandmother, and by her father, when he was not in jail. She sees school and education as an escape, and when she has the chance, she accepts a scholarship at an elite boarding school. From there, she attends Harvard and Columbia school of journalism, and gets a job as a writer for a serious news magazine. Her travels through the different social levels of urban New York, from the projects to prisons to political circles to elite boarding schools, result in really striking and thought provoking commentary. (I didn't agree with every thing that Amy or the other characters said, and, happily, it didn't appear that Issacs was offering a lecture.) At the same time, the story is accessibly comtemporary, making frequent reference to recent world events and popular culture in a way that grounds the story in a particular time and place and gives the impression that Amy is not so devoted to politics and CSPAN that she has never watched reality TV.

Susan Issac creates a intelligent, self-sufficient, yet vulnerable character and neither Issacs not her character seems inclined to understimate the intelligence of the reader. Amy is charming, smart (reading four or five newspapers a day with a keen interest in politics and current events) and interested in what is going on in the world around her. In order to grasp and appreciate some of Amy's wit and social criticism, the reader is expected to be a smart, well-aware person as well. Amy Lincoln is a truly memorable literary character, incredibly thoughtful, observant, honest, witty, and vulnerable.

One of my favorite scenes is one where Amy falls in her apartment (she later learns that she had broken three ribs) and she is unable to get up off the floor. She is in pain, and worried that she had really hurt herself. She wants to call someone and ask for help, but is afraid that no one would be interested enough to come and help her. She does call an aquaintance, lying on her back on the floor, but she is unable to bring herself to tell him what has happened to her. When she can't keep him on the phone any longer, she makes her way to her bedroom, and in the morning takes herself to an emergency room. The quiet, resigned way in which she deals with her aloneness is heartbreaking and impressive at the same time. Though scared, Amy never seems depressed. I hope that this book gets the attention it deserves.

Susan Isaacs usually offers a fast but entertaining read, with astute commentary mixed with tales of social climbing and coupling. This book flops, though. The writing is turgid. The plot is uninteresting. The characters never come to life and are not believable. Isaacs' own social climbing and insecurities are fully on view.

In this novel, Isaacs' protagonist was plucked from a housing project and selected for an elite boarding school based on her brains. She then went to Harvard. When the novel opens, she is a journalist for a serious political magazine. Nothing this woman says or does shows any sign of intellect. I could not picture her as a respected political writer, or as she herself puts it, "a better-than-competent journalist and political analyst" (p.301). The reader would need to be shown these skills. Believe me, we aren't.

The protagonist's father, Chicky, a felon with a heart of gold, is equally implausible. Freddy, an alleged resident of the barrio, talks in an absurd manner. What Latino teenager says so-and-so "has been conferencing with my father's lawyer"?

I also was put off by Isaacs' ethnic chauvinism. A previous reviewer mentioned how this played out in terms of Mid East politics. I also observed it in the protagonist's many put downs of WASPS. It's OK to make fun of others, in a light-hearted way, but this had a mean-spirited quality, including discussion of how a blue-eyed man could not be attractive to the protagonist. Really? The color of a person's eyes is decisive in this regard?

This book is poorly put together, badly plotted, and without true character development. It's not even funny. The main character is annoying and narcissistic. If I had to guess how this book came about, I would say that Isaacs got so big in the sales department that her publisher let her venture forth with this, without the editing that's probably saved her in the past.

Issacs's novels aren't mere replays of one another. The protagonist of each is a woman, but they're not "women's novels" -- or not merely that, anyway. This one isn't a mystery, as some of her best have been, but it's certainly suspenseful. Thirty-year-old Amy Lincoln ("no relation") is a more-than-competent New York political analyst and journalist at IN DEPTH, a magazine so serious it doesn't run pictures at all. Despite her degrees from Harvard and Columbia School of Journalism, she grew up in the projects, the daughter of a mostly likeable but only semi-successful small-time criminal and a mother who disappeared when she was a few months old, dumping her in the reluctant lap of her Grandma Lil, a part-time leg-waxer. Her background left her with a rather confrontational style and very chary of commitment in relationships, even though for two years she's been with the pretty much terrific John Orenstein, a documentary film maker who pushes all her passion buttons but with whom she is convinced she ought to break up. But all that is just the background to this multilayered story. While covering a private money-raiser by a presidential candidate, she witnesses a young, personable gate-crasher's claim to be the senator's illegitimate son. As she gets involved, against her better ethical judgment, with his quest for acceptance, she comes to the realization that she must also uncover the truth about her own mother and the theft of a diamond ring that sent her father to jail for the first time. She's an expert researcher and (speaking as someone in a similar line of work) I found the process fascinating. But Amy's search is only the means to discovering who she is, whether she's really her mother's daughter in terms of bent psychology, and what to do about John. The story is set, rather pointedly, against the backdrop of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, but I'm not sure I see the relevance. And there are also frequent flashback references to the events of September 11, as is probably inevitable for any future novel set in present-day New York City, but at least they play some part in the characters' personal lives. This certainly isn't a "funny" book, but Isaacs's dry wit and droll capsule descriptions add a leavening of humor that keeps things on an even keel. And her spot-on depictions of the supporting characters are marvelous. Every novel this author writes is better than the one before.

Since she burst onto the mystery scene with Compromising Positions, Susan Isaacs has created plots featuring strong heroines who find page-turning conflict in the most mundane worlds.

Here she steps away from the suburbs into slightly edgier territory. Amy Lincoln, a mature 29-year-old political writer, has risen from a beyond-dysfunctional home in the projects. Following a scholarship to a select prep school, she fought her way into Harvard and then Columbia Journalism School.

And now she's feeling stranded. Her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend doesn't seem to be moving to marriage. Her best friend is between marriages. Her father, released from prison for the third time, won't introduce her to his new girlfriend; after all, he's been passing for 36.

It's not clear what pushes Amy to start asking questions about her past after all this time. Maybe she is inspired by a young man who crashes a senator's reception, claiming to be a long lost son. For some reason, she gets her father to talk about her long-lost mother, then uses her reportorial skills to track down the missing family.

As Amy explores her roots, we're treated to a detailed description of just about everyone she meets -- even people who just walk onstage for a few pages. These detours add color to the novel and I for one didn't mind slowing down.

The climactic scene pulls the book together, striking just the right note. We realize how cruelly Amy's mother set events in motion that harmed everyone she knew: her own parents, Amy's father and ultimately Amy herself. True, Amy went to good schools, but there's a hint of scar tissue when she deals with past and present relationships.

Sometimes Amy seems extremely mature for a 29-year-old; after all, the author's quite a bit older. She's been through a lot, though, so her character is plausible. Her romantic life is a little more far-fetched, and the ending seems to doom the book to the "women/romance" category.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this book. I get tired of whiny, helpless heroines who can't seem to take charge of their lives, so I found myself liking Amy's strength and her willingness to accept the consequences of her own actions.

Amy Lincoln, associate editor at the serious news weekly In Depth, is covering Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bowles. The senator begins his campaign by announcing, "Our penile system is in atrocious shape!" Amy's life is in even worse condition. Phyllis, her mother, ran out when Amy was a baby, while her father went to prison. Shoplifting Grandma Lil, who looked like a member of the Potato Head family and wanted only to be upper class, raised her. Amy's poverty granted her a scholarship in a fancy boarding school --- and the chance to better herself while exiting her tumultuous family life.

Amy attends a party for Senator Bowles when a young man appears and claims to be the senator's son. Intrigued, Amy meets the boy, Freddy, to hear his story. When Freddy asks how a parent can just walk away from a child, Amy decides to call her father and search out the truth about her mother. The underlying mystery of her life can no longer be ignored, especially as she now wishes to have a family of her own. Unfortunately, as her desire for a baby peaks, her once-promising relationship declines. But Amy wonders if that's all for the best since she can't help harboring fears that she would follow her mother's pattern and become a defective, abandoning parent.

At first, Amy's search for her mother parallels her investigation of Senator Bowles's past. Then her own personal search takes off on its own, leading Amy to meet with some interesting characters, and skulk about like a detective. The more she discovers about her parent, the more mysteries unfurl before her. For example, if Phyllis came from a wealthy background, why did her upwardly aspiring mother-in-law detest her? Why hasn't Phyllis made any attempt to track Amy down?

As Amy inquires into her mother's life, and her own, her work provides a sometimes-interfering backdrop (leading Amy to muse that movie heroines don't seem to spend much time at employment). She also finds herself longing for her ex-boyfriend with passion, even as she half-heartedly searches for a likely successor. However, her yearning for John is hopeless; he has made it plain that the relationship is over. Is it a matter of her wanting only what she knows she can't have?

Amy's voice, and the funny little zingers throughout her story, along with the fascinating puzzle of Phyllis, hooked me. Add to that mix Amy's wealthy and quirky best friend, her endless craving for her nice guy ex-boyfriend, her bizarre upbringing, and a peek into the workings of a newsmagazine. Despite my few initial misgivings regarding much back-story and many subplots (at first I thought they tended to slow the plot; I soon grew to love them) I found ANY PLACE I HANG MY HAT to be an absorbing, enjoyable read.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

There is an underlying sadness and profound pathos at the core of Susan Isaacs'
"Any Place I Hang My Hat" despite the steely resolve and goal-oriented determinism of its heroine, Amy Lincoln. For Amy is basically an orphan, abandoned by her Mother and her father, Chicky who spends most of his life in prison.
But Amy perseveres and makes a good life for herself but is haunted by the specter of her Mother: why did she leave me, where is she now?
Besides an innate talent at writing, the aforementioned determinism and a coterie of good friends and relations, Amy has one hell of a sense of humor. Her best friend Tatty has decided to move back home after another failed marriage and has invited Amy over for dinner: "Tatty avoided looking at me, as she usually did at times like these, after (Tatty's parents) M and D had set sail on their nightly voyage from conviviality to stupor."
Or when Amy accompanies Tatty to what is in reality a "Meat Market": "Blue J's was something out of a horror movie in which aliens sucked out your essence and turned you into them. Tatty, meanwhile, patted the under curled ends of her sprayed-stiff, dark blond hairdo. Being old money allowed her to use visible hair spray. Nouveau riche blond hair had to flutter-if not fly-in a breeze."
Isaacs has cast Amy as Modern Every Woman: never able to commit to a man, wary of Men who do want to commit, scared of Men who are better looking than she: "But I'd never been able to stand guys, handsome or froggy, who pose questions...Where did you go to school?...in a smarmy tone, as if the real question was...Do you like to f**k standing up while eating egg salad?"
But family or the lack thereof is what most ails Amy and as usual her take on it is hilarious, though bittersweet: "Even when it was a dysfunctional family-like Tatty's, with her father so drunk he took a nap at the table with his cheek on the roast goose-I was jealous and resentful that I wasn't part of it."
Susan Isaacs has written a hilarious book about families, relationships and the search for a Bond. And, despite all the self-help books, despite the self- help television programs, despite the abundance and variety of food, jobs available, leisure time, this Bond continually eludes most of us. What it all boils down to then, is giving and getting Love and more to the point finding someone with which to share it: nothing earth-shaking, nothing otherworldly.
But Isaacs has filled the pages of "Any place..." with wit, candor and gorgeous plump prose. And that is not run-of-the-mill, by any means.

This was the first Susan Isaacs novel I've read and it will probably be the last. I felt the author was trying to be funny throughout the book--and failing miserably. The main character was boring, the ending managed to be both predictable and implausible, and the whole book was utterly forgettable. Maybe Isaacs has done better, but judging from Any Place I Hang My Hat, I don't get the hype about her.

I picked this book up in the airport at the beginning of one of those travel days from hell. It saved me.
Amy, the main character in this book, has been motherless since before she can remember. And fatherless for much of her life while her dad, Chicky, does time in prison. She fears she will end up like Chicky, stealing cars and doing time. But her greater fear is that she has her mother's child-leaving gene, despite her Harvard/Columbia scholarship education and weighty job as a political correspondent at a serious magazine. You see, her smarts are her mother's, and she's really nothing like Chicky. Her fear, and the circumstance of being at a campaign fund raiser where the [...]child of the candidate shows up to announce his parenthood, lures her into finding her mother despite arguments against this strategy from her dad and best friend.
What made me love this book was the way Issacs was able to make Amy embody the feelings and actions of someone who has never quite gotten enough emotional support to feel stable in this world, to have any confidence that she's valuable and can be loved. But Amy "gets over it." So it's hopeful for those of us who are looking for that feeling that we are OK. It may end a little too neatly, but fiction is fiction and I for one can like a happy ending.

I adore Susan Isaacs' books simply because she writes exactly what women think and why they act as they do. Her characters are so developed that you hate to let go of them when the book is finished. However...having said all this, ANY PLACE is not her best work. I do love the Jewish flavor of her books and the light politics, but this book was heavy on the politics of the 2004 presidential election. After listening to it non-stop on news programs for over a year, I was not willing to invest the time in this book to regurgitate the 2004 elections. I want to be entertained, not bored with more of the same crappola as to why the democrats are so much more progressively attuned and brilliant than the conservative Republicans. I really don't want that in my entertainment. I've loved all her books, SHINING THROUGH and RED, WHITE AND BLUE are two of my favorites, but this one was just too heavy handed with politics and overshadowed the story of a strong and determined young woman.