London Is the Best City in America [Mass Market Paperback]

Laura Dave (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2007

Emmy Everett is reluctantly heading home to New York for her brother Josh’s wedding. She has spent the last three years in a fishing town in Rhode Island and, having little to show for it, she doesn’t particularly want to answer the questions she is sure to face about her (ex)-fiancé, her (questionable) career choices, her (unknown) future. But she is still shocked when her typically resolute brother Josh confesses he is having doubts about his imminent marriage – and he asks Emmy the hardest question of all: what do I do now?

With seventy-two hours until the wedding, Emmy embarks with Josh on a road trip to help him find a mystery woman, and to answer some long overdue questions about who he wants to spend his life with. It isn’t only Josh who has some lessons to learn. Along the way, Emmy discovers some undeniable truths about what she wants from her own life; and she begins to realize that perhaps her own happy ending is not as far away as it seems.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Dave's winning debut, narrator Emmy Everett is a sensitive and introspective young woman who is emotionally and geographically paralyzed. Ever since ditching her sleeping fiancé in a Rhode Island motel, Emmy has lived in the quiet fishing village of Naragansett, working at a bait shop and putting together an interminable documentary on fishermen's wives. Three years pass, and her beloved big brother, Josh—funny, smart and successful—is getting married, forcing Emmy out of her self-imposed exile for a weekend in the New York City suburb of Scarsdale. With 72 hours to the wedding, Emmy finds Josh confused: does he want to marry Meryl, or be with Elizabeth, the woman he's been seeing on the side? Emmy agrees to join Josh on the eve of the wedding for a daylong trip to find Elizabeth and, hopefully, what "the right thing to do" really is. The intriguing Elizabeth, as well as the authenticity of the relationship between Emmy and Josh, make the conflict credible and involving. It's hard not to root for these vivid characters; even the heroine's high school flame, Josh's best friend Jaime Daniel Berringer, is distinctive and likable, making Emmy's interest in him contagious. Josh and Emmy's happy, exasperating parents and Josh's buoyant sister in-law-to-be round out the cast, giving readers plenty of reasons to enjoy this promising new author. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Dave's absorbing, piercing debut takes place over a weekend. Emmy Everett, who has been living in Rhode Island and working at a tackle shop since leaving her fiance three years earlier, reluctantly returns to Scarsdale, New York, for the wedding of her older brother, Josh, to his longtime girlfriend, Meryl. Emmy is shocked when Josh tells her he's been seeing another woman, Elizabeth, on the side. Elizabeth, a thirtysomething single mother with a teenage daughter, is nothing like the polished, sophisticated Meryl, but when Emmy meets her and her daughter, Grace, she realizes nothing is as clear-cut as it seems. Josh's struggle over what he wants gives Emmy insight into her own inertia and her failed relationship with Matt, whom Emmy finds she is not quite over. So much happens in Dave's wonderfully plotted first novel that it's hard to believe the events all occur in the space of a few days. Dave expertly captures the ennui and indecision many twenty- and thirtysomethings grapple with when faced with big, life-changing decisions. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143038508
• ISBN-13: 978-0143038504
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laura Dave is the author of London is the Best City in America, The Divorce Party, and The First Husband. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Self, NPR's All Things Considered, The Huffington Post, and Redbook. She lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Praise, June 15, 2006

By 

Kelly (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: London Is the Best City in America (Hardcover)

London is the kind of book you read because the author is just that good. At its most basic form, the storyline is not terribly innovative, overall - girl is in love with boy, girl leaves boy behind, girl is faced to revisit and analyze her decision some years later in order to grow beyond where and what she is. An earlier customer review stated "the book's message seems to be: you've got to make choices, and they must be realistic...what a surprise." The unexpected part of all this, though, is that the author has taken a template of so many relationships, so many lives, and crafted a way to tell you a story that you very well may already know - and yet don't want to miss a word. She talks to you, in a friend's voice, inviting you to participate in the journeys of these characters to which she has gifted life.

Put simply, you will *feel* when you read this. It's the kind of stuff that makes you smile and smirk and cry - sometimes really cry - and close your eyes after passages. The type of prose that you want to re-read out loud to someone else, sort of like sharing song lyrics that resonate. The type that's both personal and communal. Soon after I started, I found that I could only comfortably read it at home because I couldn't be honest enough anywhere else to really experience it the way that I unconsciously, unwillingly, inevitably did, every time.

Ms. Dave's art puts the reader in a place of self-reflection - striking a most impressive balance of suspending one's own reality while simultaneously discovering it. She has the ability to accurately detail the unspoken, unchartered territory of one's heart and give the reader an experience that is unexpected but hoped for all the while. I'm very pleased that a movie will be made from it, for the sole reason that both book and author will continue to receive well-deserved recognition. I also know, however, that a film will never manage to convey the details so beautifully articulated here, and that no matter how good the actor, there will be many emotions you'll feel when you read that are much more powerful than those you'll see.

This book, this author, does that. It is, wholly, a gorgeous debut.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh and Cry with "London", May 22, 2006

By 

W. Pellegrino (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: London Is the Best City in America (Hardcover)

Dave's book is funny, and real, and sad in the best ways imaginable -- you will feel for this family of characters, appreciate your mom, be reminded of all the hard questions about life and love, and wish, more than anything, for your own happy ending. A+ !!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Summer Read, May 25, 2006

By 

Julia - See all my reviews

This review is from: London Is the Best City in America (Hardcover)

I received my copy on Saturday and spent the whole weekend reading it- I couldn't put it down. London is the Best City in America is funny and so smart. I really connected to the main character Emmy and didn't want the story to end. I found out about Laura Dave after reading about her in a magazine- I'm so glad I found her and can't wait for her second book!