Rattled [Hardcover]

Debra Galant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 21, 2006

Set in the fictional subdivision of Galapagoes Estates,” Rattled is a very funny look at what happens when soccer moms, animal rights activists, dishonest real estate developers and, of course, rattlesnakes get together and fight for ascendancy in the rapidly developing New Jersey suburbs.

Heather Peters is anxious to move to the newly minted development. All she wants there is a nice house.  Well, a nice house and a nice piece of land.  And of course a basement gym, a master bath with radiant heat, Jacuzzi and his-and-her toilets. She could make do without a media room if she had to.  After all, the pioneers hadn’t had plasma TV, and they’d survived.  Heather is not your average suburban housewife—or maybe she is.  Her fortuitous meeting with a endangered  species of rattlesnake sets this first novel in motion.  You may find yourself feeling sorry for the snake.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Galant skewers the shallow, striving, McMansion-dwelling suburbanites in this engaging satire. Heather Peters is staring 35 in the face—though "depending on the light, [she could] still pass for a high school cheerleader"; her husband, Kevin, can barely stand her half the time, and her son, Conner, is a complete misfit—but at least they've just landed their dream home in Galapagos Estates, a new development in New Jersey. Galant follows their comic trials and those of two longtime area residents: Agnes, an animal lover and PETA sympathizer, and egg farmer Harlan White, who freelances as a handyman and makes a "fortune off those suckers." Which is how Harlan finds himself smashing the head of an endangered rattlesnake on Heather's back porch... and how Heather gets arrested after Agnes fingers her as the murderer of an endangered species... and how Galapagos Estates becomes the center of a media firestorm. Heather's rise to fame as a "rattlesnake killer" makes a handy metaphor about urban sprawl and the battle of new residents versus old ones, and pokes fun at the oversize egos of slimy developers and yuppies alike. Galant shows a keen knowledge of the real estate turf war and its soldiers in this wincingly funny book—but craft sympathetic characters she does not. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

What better target for satire than the McMansions looming over once fertile farmland? The SUVs of housing, monuments to hubris and overconsumption, these behemoths are familiar terrain for Galant, who writes a column on suburban life for the New York Times. In her smart and diverting first novel, she shrewdly parses the repercussions of this brazen misuse of precious land in a nimble and ironic comedy of errors featuring the materially ambitious Heather Peters and her dream house in a new development in New Jersey ludicrously named Galapagos Estates. Heather is dismissive of her lawyer husband, a horrible mother to her anxious third-grader son, and insultingly rude to Harlan White. The last native landowner left, aside from eco-minded Agnes, Harlan is valiantly resisting the aggressive tactics of unscrupulous developer Jack Barstad. Heather thinks she has found paradise, but when a timber rattler, a deadly and endangered species, appears on her patio, she soon finds herself in hell. Galant is hilarious and right on in this venomous comedy about nature, nurture, and the ecology of greed. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (February 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312349319
• ISBN-13: 978-0312349318
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,856,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Former "Jersey" columnist for The New York Times, I'm now editor-in-chief of the Baristanet.com, a local community blog based in northern New Jersey that gets 10,000 visits daily.

My new book, "Cars from a Marriage," comes out April 27.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the Big House Now, May 16, 2006

By 

Pseudonymous the Younger - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rattled (Hardcover)

When we first bought our modest little townhouse, there was an enchanted wood behind us. And in that wood were chipmunks and raccoons, white-tailed deer and woodchucks and the songs of bluebirds. Then a great evil came out of the North. Dozens of giant 4500 square-foot McMansions began popping up in the wood like malignant mushrooms. The songs of the bluebirds are gone, and so are the cute animals. My wife and I often wonder what manner of evil creatures dwell in those houses. (We like to imagine that they are pale and only come out at night to feed.)

Rattled is the hilarious story of a woman who moves into a McMansion home development like the one in my backyard. She is a self-centered, materialistic, upwardly mobile, overly-assertive, hyper-energenic yuppie housewife who ends up battling just about everyone and everything in the community (including neighbors, rattlesnakes, rattlesnake lovers, corrupt developers, other 3rd grade class moms, and a lot of rats) in order to achieve the life she feels entitled to.(Imagine the Eva Longoria character from Desperate Housewives on steroids.) And while Rattled may sound like a "woman's book", it is not. Everyone (adults only, please) will enjoy it. It is the kind of book Carl Hiaasen would have written if Carl Hiaasen were a woman and lived in New Jersey and . . . you know. . . had hundreds of rats in his basement.

Also, I have to admit, reading this book made me feel much better about my new neighbors: maybe they'll be invaded by rats and rattlesnakes too.

Highly recommended.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Snakes are the Good Guys, February 24, 2006

By 

Susan Cramer "Harsh Critic" (G'ville, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rattled (Hardcover)

"Rattled" by Debra Galant has all the characters we love to hate-the slimy developer, the shallow and acquisitive yuppie couple, the Stepfordesque PTO moms. The comedic drama is played out on the vanishing home turf of the endangered New Jersey timber Rattler. Deadly yet endearing, these snakes may well be the most sympathetic characters in the book! In her well-plotted first novel, former NY Times columnist Debra Galant serves up a simmering stew of social issue and slaptick. "Rattled" is Anna Quindlen meets the Marx Brothers

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun but Dumb, June 30, 2006

By 

L. M. Masson "Queen Lisa" (Mars) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rattled (Hardcover)

A good summer read, but ridiculous. This is good chewing gum for the brain. Perhaps an easy read on the beach, or on a plane. Perhaps you want to read the comics, but already have.
Rattled won't go into the history books as good literature.