So Happy Together

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:30:00 +0000

So Happy Together is Maryann McFadden’s second novel in which the themes of love, change, and nature—along with a strong and very human woman protagonist—are at the heart. Claire Noble is a forty-five-year-old woman in the “sandwich” generation; she has to juggle living her own life while caring for her daughter, as well as her aging parents. As the book begins, Claire is planning her new life with her fiancé Rick, who loves golf nearly as much as he loves an easy and uncomplicated life. But Claire’s life is anything but uncomplicated. Her daughter, to whom she hasn’t spoken in months, abruptly returns home and has a baby. Claire’s father is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. An environmental writer moves into the area and asks Claire to take the photos for his upcoming article. The beautifully planned life she and Rick used to have becomes very messy very quickly, and all that Claire thought she wanted, all she thought she was, comes into question.

The book is set in New Jersey and Cape Cod. McFadden writes beautiful descriptions of both areas, and there is a strong emphasis on embracing nature and family. There is also a strong focus on images, which makes sense considering Claire is a photographer, and the culminating scene takes place at her art show.

I wholeheartedly applaud the telling of the story of a woman in Claire’s position, and I also appreciated the story being told, at times, from the perspective of Claire’s mother. The lives and challenges of middle aged and elderly women aren’t often represented in today’s fiction world. The women in _So Happy Together _have a pocket of emptiness in their lives, and we get to see them fill in those pockets as the book goes on.

While the book has a fairly interesting plot and characters that are generally believable, the book tries to do just a bit too much. The layers of stress and trauma from side characters get to be overwhelming, and at times, the writing suffers. The effort to show the real complexities of the world is admirable, but it gets too heavy handed in places.

That being said, I love McFadden's (mostly) subtle agenda of protecting the environment and raising awareness about the beauty and magic in the natural world. Inherently, the book rejects cookie cutter suburbia and development, and this is a lovely addition to the text. So Happy Together is a decent followup to The Richest Season. It is not a step up in quality, but it is certainly not a step down.

Written by: Kristin Conard, October 6th 2009

The Richest Season

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:28:00 +0000

By Maryann McFadden

Hyperion

The Richest Season is a familiar tale to any romance reader, occasional or obsessive: a wife and mother, disillusioned with her compressed, tepid worldview and identity, flees to an exotic locale in order to find herself. In this case, the wife and mother in question is Joanna Harrison. An empty nester with a distant corporate husband, she spontaneously decides to run away to a new life on Pawleys Island. She becomes a caretaker of an ailing older woman, Grace, meets some colorful local characters and begins to get in touch with—well, the story unfolds predictably from there.

McFadden does throw in a few surprising garnishes along the way. Grace, the older woman with a terminal illness, is one; her story has some interesting parallels to Joanna’s as Grace struggles to come to terms with her death and life. Paul, the husband left behind, also plays a surprisingly large role in the book, with his own chapters of narrative that give him some complexity and humanity. There is also a pleasing metaphor centering on the migration habits of mother sea turtles; however, the book doesn’t venture much outside its own comfort zone.

Some books take over your life from the first page. You spend your days either reading them or halfheartedly going through the motions while yearning to be reading them. Then there are books that fit into the cracks of your life, filling it up the days instead of consuming them. These books are read in odd snippets, right before bed or while waiting for toast to pop up or whenever it’s within grabbing distance and the time is right. The Richest Season, is of the second species. It’s entertaining enough to pass the time with while waiting for the sauce to thicken or while brushing your teeth. It won’t keep you breathlessly awake until you read the last word, but you will drift off to sleep with a warm heart and quiet mind, confident in happy endings.

** Sometimes we accidentally duplicate a review. What can we say? Perfection is an illusion. Click here for another Feminist Review writer's vantage point on The Richest Season.**

Written by: Jo Ristow, October 4th 2009