Customer Reviews

Babyville

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If you have just picked up Babyville because you thought that it would all be about babies and pregnancy then think again. This book is about three women whose lives are turned upside down by a life changing event, which is motherhood of course.

Jane Green has written this book in three sections for each of the main characters. Julia is trying desperately to have a child but is trying to cover up her bad relationship. Maeve has never wanted children until something unexpected happens. Sam has just had a baby and realizes that having children is not all that it is cracked up to be.

This is a really great about motherhood and friendship. If you have never read a Jane Green book before then this would be the perfect book to start with.

This book has everything: characters we can love, real-life problems to which most everybody (male and female) can relate, and a point of view that is not preachy, and that actually sees both sides of the problem.

And that problem is babies...from the obsessive desire to get pregnant (a very real, unblinking look at what happens to a couple struggling with infertility) to an unwanted pregnancy (an equally real look at decisions that are almost impossible to make), to a much-wanted pregnancy that leads to an unforeseen aftermath.

Each of the three main characters, Julia, Maeve and Sam, are delightful in their own way, each conforming to the current Brit Lit cliche of young, ultra-fashionable, ultra-career minded, ultra-sexy but still wonderful women with various hearts of gold. Their men are not caricatures, but real people whose thoughts and needs are sensitively described in this book--a breath of fresh air! As we watch the three women grapple with different issues in the fertility arena, we come to love them and care deeply for the babies they may or may not have.

I was surprised at just how good this book really was. I was expecting another light, breezy British outing, and although this book certainly delivers on that level, it is also a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at parenthood and what it does, and does not, mean to those of us who have children, or who have every thought of having one.

A keeper!

Okay, from the gist of the other reviews of Babyville, I am the black sheep but I HATED this book. It started off great. I liked the Julia storyline. I know a lot of desperate 30 somethings who have mistakenly thought having a baby would fix a relationship. But as far as Maeva and Sam - UGH. Who cares? One woman, Maeve, has a seedy one night stand (literally- standing in an alley) and gets pregnant, and then eventually she and the philandering sperm donor realize they are truly soul mates and it was destiny? Ridiculous. And Sam. While her crush on Dan is amusingly psychotic (especially when she is looking for "signs" that Dan loves her and then ignoring them when it doesn't bode well for their fantastical future together), her husband Chris comes across as spineless instead of sympathetic.

Jane Green is excellent at descriptive characters, realistic dialogue and amusing character flaws. But unfortunately, many of her characters come across as shallow, superficial whiners who don't deserve their ultimate happy happy joy joy endings. Skip this book in favor of her far superior novel, Mr. Maybe. You will thank me.

I managed to read the Julia segment...I plodded through a bit of Meave, then all I wanted to do was read Julia's reaction to Meave's pregnancy.. and just scanned the remaining pages looking for that. Very boring and silly book!

For those who have loved Jane Green's work in the past, as I have, this exploration into the next phase of life (committed relationships with offspring) was a welcome and wonderful trip. Green's previous work (Bookends, Mr. Maybe, and Jemima J) are some of my favorite books and I think Ms. Green is a wonderfully talented storyteller. I'm really glad to see her moving in a more mature and complex genre. I think it's time - and I look forward to more of it.

As for this newest book, "Babyville" revolves around the lives of three very different women. Seeming perfect Julia, who is a successful TV producer, career driven Maeve who gets faint with the mention of motherhood and mother in training Samantha, who can't wait to buy those maternity clothes. Of course, things don't go as they expect (otherwise, why write the book) and it's those twists and turns that make this a great Jane Green experience.

I really enjoyed this one --- it gets better with age, and I suggest a couple reads to really appreciate it. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Cheers!

I'm really shocked this book has such good reviews. It's a little misleading.

I think one of the biggest issues that I had with this book was the structure of it. When reading the description, I thought it was going to be like Little Earthquakes: A Novel or Mommy Tracked where you have one character narrate a chapter, then a different character narrates the next chapter, and they just rotate throughout the book. Instead, the first third of this book is all about one character, the second third is about the next character, and the last part is about the third character. While their lives do intersect, giving you glimpses of what happened to the character(s) you've already read about, it really leaves a bad taste at the end. When you're reading a novel, you want to get attached to the characters you're reading about, but if you do that with this book, you will be disappointed because you never really get a good resolution for the first two characters.

To me, it felt like the author was just being lazy. She would end the section of one character to begin another right when their lives were taking a turn and the character was going to have to make some big decisions. It was like the author thought, "this is going to be too complicated to write, so I'll just skip it and go on to another character, who can briefly give a vague description of what happened to the previous character." It was honestly one of the most frustrating things ever.

Spoilers ahead, although nothing that you wouldn't see coming while reading the book.

For example, she ends the section on Julia right when she gets to that point where she's almost ready to end it with Mark and start dating Jack. Right when she's giving up the idea of having a child. We don't get to see what happens when she finally makes the leap. We don't get to see her reaction to Mark getting another woman pregnant. We don't get to see the evolution of her new relationship, etc. With Maeve, we get to spend a third of the book listening to her bitch about commitment and how she never wants children. She finally starts to evolve and become a halfway likable character by the time her section is done (which ends right as she goes into labor, by the way). We don't get to see how she handles being committed to Mark or how she handles becoming a mother, you know, something that might actually be worth reading.

Other than the annoying structure, the whole story is just set in some complete alternate reality. People just don't react to situations like that in the real world. I guess my biggest issue was the fact that Maeve replaces Julia at work, gets pregnant by Julia's boyfriend (who Julia has been trying to have a child with for a year), moves into Julia's home, and becomes Julia's best friend's new best friend and somehow, magically, Julia doesn't care. There is no woman on the face of the earth who wouldn't at least be slightly bothered by the whole situation. Add to it the fact that Julia permanently moves to the US without any kind of visa, Maeve's parents magically end up together again after 20 years - after her dad abandoned the family - with no ill feelings from anyone, and Sam's husband knows she's fantasizing about another man, but he just "waits for it to pass." I mean, come on! Who are these people? They definitely aren't human.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just can't. It gets 2 stars solely for the fact that it was good bedtime material (it made me nice and sleepy). I don't think I'll be reading anymore of Jane Green's books.

I was about to put this book down after the first 50 pages or so. The plot was ok, but there was nothing to keep me reading. I decided to stick with it, and it started to get much more interesting a bit later.

The thing about this novel that frustrated me at first was the fact that it was broken up into sections. Just as I got into one woman's story, a new section would arise, much to my surprise and disappointment. However, in a very interesting style of story telling, the end result was pleasant.

I would recommend this book if you really like Jane Green, however some of her other novels are more to my liking (i.e. Jemima J).

At first, I was afraid of picking up this book. Jane Green usually writes about single girls living their lives, not married women wanting babies, but I knew that she wouldn't do me wrong!

There are three parts to this book: simply, Julia, Maeve, and Sam. These women couldn't be more different! Julia, has a live-in boyfriend and wants a baby with him, because she wants to patch up their relationship unknowingly. Maeve, on the other hand, couldn't be farther away from wanting that commitment, but she ends up pregnant instead! Sam, Julia's best friend, has the husband and baby, and looks perfect from the outside, but the inside story is way different.

This author shows that she knows what it's like to have the baby: postpardum depression, weight gain, feeling like you have lost your own life BB (before baby) and your own identity! She also knows that women can have a life as well as a family! Don't be put off by the 400 something pages, I did not get bored once!

Also, I was afraid that once I finished with the womans "story," that we would never see them again in the book, never know how everything turned out. I was wrong! Apparently, these three women are all interconnected, and that was great how she wove them all together!

Highly recommended!

This was an excellent book. The three main characters were well developed, well thought out and all very interesting. In common they had were fabulous careers, great looks and first babies, or the want of a first baby.

Julia is obsessed with having a baby, but no matter how hard she tries it just isn't happening. She is sure her boyfriend is firing blanks...

Maeve has a one night stand, and suddenly the career woman who never ever dreamed of pregnancy or babies finds herself pregnant and not sure what to do about it.

And Sam, happily married, has her first baby, suffers from post natal depression (although she is in complete denial about it), tries to be supermum... and of course her marriage hits the skids.

The three women live separate lives that come together beautifully in this book.

I really liked this book, it was easy to read and highly enjoyable, especially curled up in bed while the rain came down outside! I know its a cliche, but I just love happy endings and this book had lots of them -although they certainly weren' predictable

BABYVILLE by Jane Green

There is good chick lit, and there is bad chick lit. BABYVILLE by Jane Green is good chick lit. Why? It's not just some inane story about a 20-something working girl that is out there developing a career and finding Mr. Right at the same time and getting in to all sorts of trouble. Instead, Jane Green writes three realistic stories that are connected by common characters and each story centers on the theme of having a baby.

In the first part, Julia is a career girl who finds her life falling apart due to an obsession over getting pregnant. She's not married, but she thinks she's got a great relationship going with boyfriend Mark, but for some reason she's not perfectly happy. She thinks that if they have a baby, their relationship will be solid and she'll be the happiest girl in the world. Unfortunately, her obsession about getting pregnant takes on a dark turn, as it affects her relationship and her job in a bad way.

In the second part, Maeve, who the reader meets briefly during Julia's story, is a career woman who is just that - all career, nothing else. She has no need to be married or to have a steady relationship, let alone a baby. But, after only one fling that should not have happened, Maeve finds that her body is changing, and before she knows it, she realizes she is pregnant. What is a career girl to do?

In part three, Sam (Samantha) has her baby and her husband, but she is so fixated on her baby that nothing else seems to matter. Because of her obsession, her husband is being neglected. She doesn't see this. All she knows is that she feels like she's stuck in the house with no one to help her, and yet she does not go out to seek friends, help, or anything else for that matter. What should have been a perfect family situation turns into something stifling and suffocating as Sam's obsession with her baby consumes her and makes life miserable for those around her. When she finally meets her husband's co-worker Jill, as well as Jill's husband Dan, her obsession over her baby soon moves to Dan. She thinks her troubles are over, but are they?

I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed BABYVILLE. These stories were not the typical chick lit material. They had depth and I found that the characters were believable and somewhat likeable (I personally didn't care for Julia, but that's just my opinion! She was a bit too self-centered for me!). I definitely recommend BABYVILLE!