Kate Greathead

"That's my car," Jenny said, remembering what she was doing here. She explained the situation.

"I'm in a pickle," she added.

George's expression conveyed sympathy, but he did not offer to help. Not George. It wouldn't even occur to him.

This novel follows George from his childhood into his thirties. George is affable and bright. He's also lazy and undecided and prefers to have other people take care of him. We've all known a guy like this, who somehow never lives up to his promise, who isn't show more great at keeping promises or of showing up when he's said he would. This is a hard book to describe, since it's just the life of a guy, and while George isn't the kind of guy who is usually the subject of novels, it all makes for a great reading experience, strangely enough.

George is a frustrating character to follow, from the inertia, to the way he is given endless second chances from everyone around him, but especially his cynicism and self-pity. He receives an expensive private education, his college is paid for, his relatives are willing to give him the kinds of jobs only available to the well-connected, and yet he feels hard done by. His mom endlessly lets him move back in, his girlfriend, a kind and intelligent woman, gets back together with him far more often than is understandable, and all of that makes for surprisingly good reading. Greathead does a fantastic job rejuvenating the WMFuN*, something I didn't think was possible.

* White Male F***-up Novel show less

Once upon a time, there was a very clever burglar who when he was discovered by the daughter of the house spun a yarn about being her brother’s roommate at school. He was a delightful and handsome fellow who spun her right into bed before disappearing with the silver. So when she fell pregnant, she spun her own story about going to a sperm bank and that was how Laura got Emma.

I think from that beginning it is clear that Laura is not your usual single mother and this is not your usual story show more about the challenges of single motherhood. She is more concerned about climate change than hemlines. A photo of her was posted as an example of street fashion so she took that as official imprimatur and never changed her look again. She is the child of wealth, multi-generational wealth, though she morally disapproves of privilege and lives right on the edge of Harlem because it’s more affordable and shops at a neighborhood grocery rather than at an upscale market.

Emma is a fairly typical young girl who wants a more fashionable mother, at least at first. She has an awakening that sets her on a course of self-improvement and self-discipline that distances her somewhat from her mother, though a lot of that seems normal teen angst.

Laura and Emma is filled with subtle humor that pokes and pricks at Laura’s pretensions. For example, Laura thinks she is commendably democratic and anti-elitist because she shops at a discount grocery and lives in an apartment without a concierge, with a real cross-section of society on the edge of Harlem. Others might see her as a gentrifier. But it’s more than that, she’s a working mom, but when her supervisor told her she could not work half-time and take summers off to take care of Emma, she appealed to the board–her relatives since she was working for a library founded by her grandfather.

This is is not a big story, it’s a quiet little book about a family. I enjoyed the humor, the subtle hypocrisies that Laura remained oblivious to. Laura is one of those people who move lightly through life, often taking the easy road, meaning well, but not always doing good. This is not a book with broad laugh out loud humor, but it is saturated with the moments that make you grin.

I was provided an e-galley of Laura and Emma by the publishers through NetGalley.

Laura and Emma at Simon & Schuster

Kate Greathead author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/9781501156601/ show less

I LOVED this book. Went into it with no expectations and no memory of who recommended it to me, and what a delightful surprise. Unexpectedly hilarious at times (as in, I laughed until I cried over one scene) and unsparingly unsentimental. It's about undercurrents and how much is unsaid.

This novel is like a Woody Allen movie - if you like his movies you'll enjoy this book: the characters aren't meant to be sympathetic, they're meant to be observed in their natural habitat and witness the show more pathos and humor that occurs.

I'll be thinking about this book for a long, long time. show less

Confession: I am a complete sucker for any novel featuring the rich white people of New York City doing stupid things. This is one of the best. Laura, heiress to a modest fortune and the most totally passive character I've ever come across, becomes pregnant by a "Six Degrees of Separation" type flimflam man and has the baby, Emma, because her cab takes too long getting crosstown for her abortion appointment. Ridiculous! And yet as the years peel along, Laura occasionally makes a decision (a show more move to a penthouse in almost Harlem, shopping in an actual bodega) and, by neglect and accidentally, Emma turns out to be a stubborn yet entrancing girl. The most amusing character is Laura's mother Bibs, archetype of a Lady Who Lunches, whose outrageous presence is necessary just to keep the entire work from being the equivalent of a long comfy nap in an upstairs room at a private club. So I'm afraid I am unable to morally justify my outsized pleasure at this very silly book. So what.

Quote: "For many women, planning a wedding became something much more: an opportunity for the universe to make good on all the ways in which the bride felt she'd been shortchanged in life." show less