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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Easy Read of Quality, September 1, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and devoured it in as few sittings as possible. It is the kind of book that, for me, has too many extraordinary plot twists and character traits to seem completely realistic, but the writing was so good that I was prepared to suspend belief and just go with the story.
The novel begins with Pippa Lee at 50 years old, married to a man 30 years her senior, and moving into a retirement complex. The first part of the book describes her current life, focussing on her relationship with her husband and two adult children. The second part goes back to Pippa's childhood and charts her wild and self-destructive youth up until she meets her husband and changes her life. The final portion of the book returns to the present day, where all is not right between Pippa and her family, and things have reached breaking point.
I found Pippa to be an interesting if not always likeable character. She seemed to drift through life, easily influenced by others, with little conviction about what she wanted or with any kind of moral compass. Despite this, I liked Pippa. I felt she was very much a product of her childhood and was just a confused, lonely person at heart. I was also interested by a lot of the secondary characters and enjoyed how the author managed to perfectly sum up their personalities in just a few piercing descriptive sentences or lines of dialogue.
Perhaps the one false note was the ending. Part of me feels that the loose ends were all tied up too neatly, within just a few pages, and perhaps the book could have gone on a bit longer to make the ending more realistic. Furthermore, there was also something that happened near the end of the book that just didn't ring true. I won't give too much away, suffice to say that there was almost a metaphysical element to the ending that I found unsatifying.
Overall, I have to give this book 5 stars because it is an intelligent, sensitive novel, and also a real page turner. Who could ask for anything more?
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A lot missing in this "novel" or is it really a screenplay?, February 1, 2009
Perhaps I've read too many other novels about women from the classics Hester Prynne and Madame Bovary to Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Tyler and Sue Miller's modern women to be overly impressed by the short shrift Miller gives her Pippa.
So, we all change as we mature. Daughter of a dysfunctional mother, she becomes a rebellious teenager. Surprise. Not enough supervision by her aunt, she is corrupted by a predatory older woman. Surprise surprise. When she falls into the New York drug crowd, one might wonder why the influence of her Episcopalian pastor father and dislike for her dexedrine-addicted mother don't have any influence on that choice.
But all goes well after she falls in love with a married man 30-yrs. her senior and has twins and hunkers down as a wife and mother for the next 30 yrs. Why? That question is not quite answered. Except that I guess she was pretty normal all along except for the angst of young adulthood. This is all told in flashback.
Now open the novel with Pippa and 80 yr. old husband Herb deciding to move into a retirement community that doesn't quite agree with Pippa. Except that isn't explained too well either, considering Herb's exceptional desire to stay young (with gusto). And except, as Pippa says, that Marigold Village, the retirement community, is like a fairy tale, where you enter, and something happens to you like children meeting a witch. Well, something bad does happen to her, but, again (surprise) like a fairy tale all ends well because, after all, Pippa was just pretty normal to begin with anyway. I guess.
The last sentence is one of the few bits of insight we have into Pippa's human condition, and it's doesn't amount to much for a novel that had the potential to be more. But it allows her to neatly walk out of the dark woods of Marigold Village with a pithy little platitude.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
One dimensional characters, July 5, 2009
I picked this up in the airport looking for a good holiday read. I was briefly engaged in the beginning with the descriptions of the retirement village and the character of Pippa Lee. But the shift to PIppa's younger self and her forays into sex, drugs, love triangles, the literary scene, mother/daughter angst, etc. was really disappointing. None of the characters are believable or have any depth at all. Pippa just floats from one crisis to another - affair with teacher, sex clubs, too many drugs, lover's ex-wife blowing her brains out - with a minimum of introspection or even realisation and change. The ending is ludicrous and all neatly wrapped up - just like in the movies.
The author either can't help herself and writes like it's a screenplay or that was what she intended all along and so didn't bother to make it a fully rounded novel with real people.
On a good note, she does portray the mother-daughter relationship quite well in parts. I think more of that with real emotion and conflict could have made this a good book.
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