Lucinda Rosenfeld

White woman privilege alert! The disturbing part of the unsympathetic narrator, Karen, is that the reader cannot divine the author's feelings for her. Although they are doing well enough, Karen is concerned when several of her Brooklyn friends pull their children from an integrated neighborhood school to send them to one with more white kids. Even though she internally challenges her own racism, it doesn't stop her from lying to move her own daughter Ruby to the whiter school, without show more including her passive preoccupied husband in the decision. Karen continues making stupid decisions throughout the book. However, there is fine humor in her internal and external responses to other overbearing mothers. But no justification for the too-neatly-wrapped up ending.

"Karen had found that the minutiae of early-year parenting was fascinating for the exact moment you were living it, after which it became, quite possibly, the most boring subject on earth." show less

This is a satirical novel about 45-year-old Karen, a white upper-middle-class liberal whose ideals about class and race and how she can better the lives of those less fortunate than her come into conflict with her desires to get ahead in the world. The result is an engaging and amusing look inside the head of a person who finds herself at odds because of conflicting desires and goals.

Karen and her husband and daughter live in oh-so-hip Brooklyn, in a somewhat diverse neighborhood. Her show more daughter attends what Karen proudly considers an integrated public school, where most of Ruby's classmates are of different skin color and class level from her. This makes Karen happy as a bleeding-heart liberal, for one because she wants her daughter to be exposed to and become friendly with, and even develop the right attitudes about, kids who are different from her, and for another because it assuages her own white guilt at her upper-middle-class and secure two-parent family status.

Conflicts arise, however, when Karen finds real-life problems getting in the way of pie-in-the-sky ideals of class and interracial unity. For example, one of her daughter's classmates starts physically attacking his classmates. Karen's noblesse oblige desire to have this boy, Jayyden, stay in the class and reap the benefit of Karen's munificence and her daughter's friendship is in conflict with Karen's fear for her daughter's safety, while at the same time feeling guilty about such supposed selfishness. In addition, she finds herself questioning her every comment, action and motive, in interacting with others not of her class or race, such as when her daughter's friend and her mother comes over for a playdate. That scene gets to the heart of Karen's dilemma in life, as every interaction with the mother is picked apart as Karen walks on eggshells, worrying about the political correctness or lack thereof of everything she says to the mother. "Will she think I'm racist? Will she think I'm trying too hard not to be racist? Am I really racist for thinking she'll think I'm racist?" is the kind of line Karen's thinking takes in this scene, and many others.

This makes for an amusing look inside the head of someone whose heart is in the right place, but who can't help but make misstep after misstep, because after all, in this world of heightened class and race awareness, is any comment or action really politically correct? In a world in which a serious article can be written decrying white girls' wearing of hoop earrings as "appropriating" black culture, Karen's struggles highlight the difficulty all well-meaning people have in dealing with the issues of race and class today. The result here is a very interesting and amusing character.

The plot thickens when issues of a failing marriage and trying to get ahead in her job -- appropriately, as a fundraiser for a food charity -- complicate things. When Karen moves her daughter to a whiter and higher-class school, more conflicts arise with the parent body there and lead her to take actions she cannot defend, all in the hopes of moving her family upward, which of course runs counter to her belief and value systems, which makes for more (amusing) internal conflict, although the actions Karen takes stretches credulity to some extent.

The novel gives a too-pat view of class and race, painting the lower-class families with more of a sympathetic brush than the higher-class families receive. (Poor = disadvantaged and wronged. Rich = callous and selfish.)

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Thank you to the author and publisher for a review copy. show less

An incredibly dark book that may be masquerading as chick lit on library shelves and is thus likely to horrify those readers looking for an affirmative, ultimately inspirational take on female friendships. However, if your taste runs more to novels along the lines of Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, and The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien, then I'm So Happy for You merits reading. Although it lacks the literary force and vivid imagery of those books, it does show more illuminate a particular type of social circle (upper-middle class/wealthy women in NYC and its environs) as they compete with each other for husbands/lovers, real estate, and babies. Neither of the main characters is particularly likable, and some of the peripheral characters are downright wretched specimens of humanity, but I'm always intrigued by authors who portray flawed characters, so that in itself didn't bother me. Still, Wendy's insecurities and her obsessive desire for a baby as yet another acquisition on the road to "maturity" make for uneasy reading. I personally could have done without the postcript which, although entertaining, sketched out fates for the characters that I would have preferred to imagine for myself. In some ways, it undercuts the powerful ending and gives the book a cutesy quality that I associate more with chick lit. Be forewarned: there are some truly ugly emotions and awkward scenes lurking within the pages of this novel, pretty-dress-cover notwithstanding. show less

I got off to a slow start with this one; in the first chapter, the relentless relating of backstory in a flat, dry, third-person voice annoyed me so much I almost didn't continue. But then I picked it up again the next day and started really enjoying it.

There have been quite a few novels and articles over the last few years about "Park Slope moms." I honestly cannot even picture their world or sympathize with their concerns. But Karen's concerns about her own attitudes toward race and class show more really struck a chord with me. I found the constant internal observations about her own hypocrisy spot-on, relatable, and funny; I didn't find her particularly unlikable or annoying, just incredibly blind to her own privilege, which is really the point of the book, I think.

Where it fell apart for me is when she starts doing stupid, risky, and even illegal things without getting caught or suffering any major consequences. She steals someone's mail and uses it to transfer her child to another school without even considering that the person whose mail she's stolen might be known to the school (and they are! And the office doesn't notice!). The PTA president, who is really concerned about where people live, hasn't checked the new family's address and discovered that IT'S HER OWN ADDRESS. Karen texts the guy she's having an affair with and mixes personal comments in with her work-related email (presumably from her work email account) and doesn't get discovered. She loses a major donor after spending the evening flirting with a fairly minor donor and isn't even talked to about it. And then when it all comes out, nobody presses charges or divorces her or fires her. She basically goes back to life as it was, with new friends and a better attitude. The only consequence she suffers is guilt.
And maybe that's the point--that's also the only consequence she suffers for her classist,
racist hypocrisy.

I've read reviews that call this book "hilarious" or "skewering." I thought it was more of a wry poke in the stomach than a hilarious skewering; maybe that's because I live a thousand miles from Karen's world physically, and a couple million perceptually. But even though the inequality curve isn't quite as steep where I live, many of us are still very aware of it, and are conscious and conflicted about our own place on it. That made this an uncomfortable read in many ways--but that's not necessarily a bad thing. show less