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The Room-Mating Season [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Rona Jaffe (Author), Deborah Hall (Narrator)
3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

Price: $64.95 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
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Book Description

April 1, 2003
A powerful new novel about life and love by Rona Jaffe, the internationally bestselling author The New York Times Book Review hails as "a minor genius."

For over five decades, Rona Jaffe has captivated readers with her "deft, irresistible storytelling" (Los Angeles Times). Now this masterful author, whose books have sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, takes us through a season of friendship, discovery, betrayal, and love to tell a story of four friends and the events that shaped their futures.

Leigh, Cady, Vanessa, and Susan meet when they become roommates in a townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side. New York in 1963 is a place of magical enchantment and infinite possibilities, especially when you're young and eager for the adventure a big city offers. Even being crammed together in a single bedroom with a kitchen too small to accommodate a table and chairs can't diminish their high spirits. A casting assistant at a talent company, Leigh is the level-headed one, the calm at the center of the whirlwind that is their lives. Cady is a prep-school teacher, emotional, passionate, and ready for love. Vanessa, a stewardess, craves her independence above all else. Susan is the wild card. Mercurial and unconventional, she makes a decision that will have far-reaching consequences in her life-and in the lives, through the years, of the others.

Sleeping and dreaming side by side, Leigh, Cady, Vanessa, and Susan could not know the decisions they made in 1963 would be challenged later, not only because they had been young when they made them, but because the world itself was going to change around them. And then, of course, there were the events in their young lives that no one could control...the events that changed everything.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Looking for Mr. Right and loving Mr. Wrong brings three women together in friendships that last four decades in this by-the-numbers saga by veteran Jaffe (Class Reunion, etc.). She follows the lives of three women-Leigh, Cady and Vanessa-who meet as ingenues in New York City, fresh out of college in 1963. The trio, plus a fourth roommate, Susan, share an Upper East Side townhouse. Leigh aspires to become a casting agent, Cady teaches high school English and Vanessa is an airline stewardess (aka a "vending machine on legs"). Susan, a mousy, slightly eccentric receptionist with a desperate air, is disliked by the other three, who eventually ask her to leave (the last straw is a case of possibly contagious warts that the hapless Susan develops). But on the weekend Susan is supposed to move out, she dies in an apparent suicide. Her death casts an intermittent pall over the next 40 years as Cady and Leigh experience life-altering romances with married men while Vanessa's surprise pregnancy finds her heading to the altar. Jaffe speeds through these decades; her portraits of the women as adults are hurried and superficial, and world events get cursory, cliched treatment ("It was late winter of 1964.... It was, and would be, a year of change. The new hot group, the Beatles, was singing their innocent hit, `I Want to Hold Your Hand'"). The breezy romances keep the pages turning, but Jaffe's fans may feel that she's working on autopilot.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Jaffe, author of The Road Taken (2000) and After the Reunion (1985), presents another gentle, knowing, and compulsively readable coming-of-age story. The year is 1963, and college friends Leigh and Cady are determined to begin their adult lives amid the cosmopolitan social whirl of New York City. An ad for roommates brings two more young women into the circle: Vanessa, a sophisticated airline stewardess, and awkward, needy misfit Susan. Leigh, Cady, and Vanessa become fast friends, united by their success with men, their good looks, and their social savvy. But Susan's eccentricities grate on her roommates, and her clumsy bids for their attention ultimately end in tragedy. Jaffe traces the lives of her characters over the next four decades with wit and poignancy. Sensible, generous Leigh falls in love and ultimately achieves both domestic and career success. Worldly Vanessa finds herself trapped in a marriage of convenience and drifts into a series of infidelities. The inner lives of all of these women are compelling, but it's the impetuous, self-centered, and recklessly loving Cady who is the lifeblood of the whole story. Jaffe is wise and witty as ever, and her latest novel will delight her fans--and win her some new ones. Meredith Parets
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Audio Cassette
  • Publisher: Sound Library; Unabridged edition (April 1, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0792728785
  • ISBN-13: 978-0792728788
  • Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 7.1 x 2.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,286,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (9)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.1 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars This book is not worth your time!, July 8, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Room-Mating Season (Hardcover)
This book was horrible. If you have the misfortune to read Room-Mating Season, you will find yourself waiting throughout the entire story for the hollow and shallow characters to develop and for the plot to pick up pace. Unbelievably the author takes the reader through decades of four women's lives who never learn any signifigant life lessons or grow past the maturity level they possessed at age 23. The overuse of the word "albeit" made me want to scream and I am amazed that I even finished this garbage. My only solace is that I checked it out from the library and didn't waste anything more than time.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing!, May 28, 2003
By 
Janice (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Room-Mating Season (Hardcover)
"The Room-Mating Season" deals with four young women, Leigh, Cady, Vanessa and Susan, who all had very different personalities came together to share a room in New York City. They all hoped to be successful and each had a different vision of what "success" is. The book chronicled their lives from early twenties to when they were in their sixties. Leigh, was the rational, career-minded one who strived to be a casting agent while Cady was the romantic, spendrift and at times naive schoolteacher. Vanessa worked as a flight attendant and found the occupation suitable for her needs for adventure and meeting new people. Susan, was the odd one in their group in the sense that she was quiet, eccentric and never quite fit in with the rest. Soon, one event happened that changed their lives forever and the decisions that they would make in future would be based upon that particular event.

The theme of the book is friendship and how they were there for each other through highs and lows. The characters may not understood the decisions some of the decisions that were made but regardless, they were always there for each other. I really enjoy this book because it was written very well, very thoughtful and just mesmerizing. Rona Jaffe also tried to chronicle the lives and mentalities of women in each of the decades starting from the sixties. At the end of the book, you would feel that you really know each of the characters and feel for them. This is not a chick lit book but definitely one written for the female audience. I highly recommend this book.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars chick lit with way too many flings going on!, January 20, 2004
This review is from: The Room-Mating Season (Hardcover)
I did like this book but ended up rating it for the kind of book it was and less for the amount of interest I had in it. I gave up and just realized it would be a big book of infidelty and it was a 4 star with that as the main topic. I felt there were way too many flings going on - can't one of these girls date a single guy?

Cady - very annoying, jealous of her friends, and can't live without being incredibly needy. Dates and falls nutso for a married guy, Paul. She enters a LONG relationship with this one and her life passes her by.

Leigh - good at heart, I wanted to believe but then again fell for a married man.

Vanessa - ok but needed to keep having flings to see if she still had it. Please!!!

Susan - ultra freak. You just need to read this book to find out more.

Charlie - fifth wheel? He has some kind of secret..wait till you find out!

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