Trophy House [Audio CD]

Anne Bernays (Author), Celeste Lawson (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2005

Trouble begins with the construction of a totally inappropriate and enormous house, a "trophy house," which unexpectedly comes to threaten the tranquility of what appears to be one woman's perfect life and marriage. Dannie Faber has lots of reasons to feel blessed. A children's book illustrator, she shares a loving marriage with Tom, a professor, with whom she divides her time between one of Boston's finest suburbs and a beloved beach house in Truro, on Cape Cod. And then, for reasons she could not possibly have foreseen, Dannie's life begins to unravel.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Is there an impulse stronger than lust—real estate lust, that is—for the comfortably middle-aged? Maybe not, teases Bernays (Professor Romeo, etc.) in this astute, witty romance, beguilingly set in the Cape Cod towns of Truro and Provincetown. Dannie Faber, a successful illustrator of children's books, is so attached to her beach house that she lives there April to November—even though she's frequently separated from husband Tom, a "gentle and distracted" MIT professor. It's a year after 9/11, and Dannie's Truro house has become a haven in a world where "civilization had cracked, setting people and events off in wild spinning." But then crass hotelier Mitch Brenner constructs a "monster house" distressingly nearby—and somebody writes "Jew Pig" in red paint (or is it blood?) on his front door. As Dannie and best friend Raymie speculate about the wrongdoer, readers may expect the plot to focus on the crime. But Bernays switches gears: Dannie turns inward as her marriage falls apart and she begins an affair with her New York editor; floundering daughter Beth moves back home; and Brenner makes a surprising alliance with Raymie. Though the plot is a bit untidy, readers will bond with Bernays's prickly, opinionated, bighearted heroine.
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

Literary veteran Bernays' compulsively readable novel features a spectacular setting: Truro, Cape Cod. And she entwines two hot topics in the opening chapters: hate crime and the construction of hideous McMansions. But basically this is a sprightly, feminist there-is-life-after-divorce tale. Dannie is a successful children's book illustrator who, now that her daughter and son are adults, loves best to be alone at the family's Truro home with her dog and her art, while her MIT anthropology professor husband lives in Boston. But everything is thrown into turmoil when an outsider builds a monstrous beach house on which someone scrawls an anti-Semitic threat. Suddenly, Dannie is forced to recognize that her marriage has gone cold, just as her daughter realizes that she, too, is in a moribund relationship. Bernays quickly drops any pretense of insights into conspicuous consumption and prejudice, and goes full throttle for a stereotypical women's fiction story line, which she executes with panache, a genuine feel for natural beauty and class conflicts, and an understanding of how smothering marriage can be. Donna Seaman
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

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; MP3 Una edition (September 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786180056
• ISBN-13: 978-0786180059
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misses on all levels, October 24, 2005

By 

baramarie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trophy House: A Novel (Hardcover)

I couldn't agree more with the majority of readers who find this
book vapid, shallow, and completely boring. I cannot understand
how one reader (from Boston) found the author had captured the
essence of Cape Cod...I frequently spend time in Truro and I
was utterly disappointed that neither Truro or the lower Cape
ever came to life in this book. She might have been anywhere.
The characters never came to life and what little we learn of them does not make you want to know more anyway.
I gave this l star because there was nothing lower.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Big disappointment, May 7, 2006

By 

slick54 (NH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trophy House: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read and enjoyed other novels by this author, so I looked forward to reading this. I can't remember a more unrelatable, dislikeable protagonist, so self-centered and caught up in her own sensibilities and aesthetics to the extent that other people served as decoration. I agree with the political slant being overworked; the message again is that one's personal aesthetics and sensibilities can trump the rights of other people.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Below expectations, September 10, 2005

By 

A. MCDERMOTT (Lagrangeville, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trophy House: A Novel (Hardcover)

Boring, boring, boring.
I kept expecting the story to get better and more interesting, but it never did.
The mystery was laughable and the character development was wafer thin.