From Publishers Weekly
Two Massachusetts families live out a decade of births, deaths, secrets and infidelities in this moving 12th novel from Thayer (An Act of Love). Narrator Lucy West, 37, is a self-employed mother of two; her husband, Max, edits the local newspaper in Sussex, a Boston suburb. Suave, irreverent Kate Cunningham and her husband, Chip, an attorney, move to Sussex in 1987; Kate and Lucy meet at their children's preschool and become fast friends. Soon the couples summer together on Nantucket, and their lives grow ever more entwined. Thayer's narrative jumps back and forth between the couples' present and their shared past. One set of chapters follows the Wests and the Cunninghams from 1987 to 1991: during these years, Kate chafed in her unfulfilling marriage, Max becomes a depressed workaholic and Lucy, devastated by her stillborn baby, takes comfort in a brief affair with Chip. Other chapters relate the events of 1998, which test Lucy's marriage and friendship all over again. When her son, Jeremy (conceived in 1991), is diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, both couples must confront the chance that Chip, not Max, is Jeremy's real father. Readers prepared for the slow pace of Thayer's plot will appreciate her detailed, realistic records of motherhood, child-rearing and domestic routine in Sussex and Nantucket. The finale, set in Boston's Children's Hospital, will strike some as cathartic and fulfilling, others as pat and predictable. Yet thoughtful chronicles of female friendship (see The Book Borrower, above) always have appeal, and Thayer's twist on the relationship is sure and steady. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Thayer focuses on the 10-year friendship between Lucy West and Kate Cunningham and their husbands in her latest novel. Lucy narrates the novel, and she explains the beginnings of her marriage and her friendship with Kate in flashback chapters that are interspersed with her narrative of the present day. As Lucy and Kate become best friends, their husbands and their children get to know each other, and they become close as well. The families vacation together in Nantucket, in a house Lucy inherited from her aunt. To make things really interesting, Thayer squeezes as much tension, drama, and tragedy as she can into the novel. Lucy fantasizes about other men; that's fairly common, but does she need to be attracted to every man who walks by her? She also finds everything around her to be sensual, from glasses of iced tea to horse stables. Unfortunately, this soap-opera novel consists of one-dimensional characters moving from one emotion to the next only to find themselves in a very predictable plot. The root of the problem is Lucy's desire to break away, if only temporarily, from her responsibilities, to just once be "the bad girl" instead of the nurturing mother, the faithful wife. But Lucy makes one false step, and her family life is changed forever, as is her best friend, Kate. What could have been a solid story of female friendship is a melodrama of marriage and lust.
Michelle Kaske
