Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Ayelet Waldman is so on the money. She's top notch with this book. This book is a hands-down winner for anyone who has ever tried to worm one's way into a young child's heart and is not that child's parent. As a babysitting grandmother who also picks up a young boy from school as well as one who has also innocently tripped and caused her own young charge to fall down suddenly and violently, I empathized immensely with Emelia, the wife of Jack who is five-year-old William's dad. I, too, once had been the object of resistance in my early babysitting days when my grandson told his mom he didn't want to have fun with me on his babysitting days.

I don't approve of Emelia's affair with Jack but that was already a given part of this novel which show more I couldn't change. All I can say is that I totally loved reading about what hard work it is to earn that deep love a young child has to offer a non-parent adult. Once it's there, it will never go away. What a great book!

He is so smart, we say wordlessly. And such a little know-it-all. show less

- Emilia Greenleaf hates her stepson. She doesn’t really mean to – she wanted to love him, but he’s incredible precocious, and when her suggests things life selling the “baby’s things on EBay”, Emilia cannot stand him. The book follows Emilia as she navigates step-motherhood in the wake of her baby’s early death. Emilia is hard to like – she’s incredibly selfish and self-absorbed, and she basically stole her husband out from underneath his ex-wife, but her grief and difficulty with motherhood rings true. William (the stepson) is heartbreaking, as it’s obvious that his father (who very rarely is around, it seems) is the only stable influence in his life, as the ex-wife is nearly certifiable (though can ya blame her? show more Emilia friggin’ stole her husband, simply because she decided he was her soul mate, despite the fact that he was already married…). show less

Stupid story of shallow superficial girl marrying up and bitching about first world problems. What makes it worth reading: painfully accurate depictions of actual NYC life.

Like Waldman’s online writing, the book veers between too much information and a refreshingly brutal honesty about things like being mad at children. It’s sometimes irritating, sometimes engaging.

My belief was often strained. The main character, Emilia, eschewed group therapy in the wake of her daughter’s death, but this didn’t adequately explain why she, her doctor, or others didn’t railroad her into individual therapy, which she clearly needed. Her husband Jack’s ex-wife was too cruel to be believable; I would have welcomed some complexity. Her stepson William is presented as a precocious five-year old, but more than once it notes Phillip Pullman’s Amber Spyglass as his favorite book. Amber Spyglass is a YA book for 12 show more and up. I’ll allow that a real-life adult MIGHT read this violent, complex, sexual book to a 5yo, but for a fictional preschooler, however precocious, to claim it? No way.

And yet, I enjoyed parts of this book, too. Waldman’s crisp writing kept me reading at a quick clip. Emilia is immature and narcissistic, but she’s also smart and interesting. William, the stepson, was a great character, though I was horrified by many of the things he was subjected to, not just the ones his mother complained that Emilia put him through. The details of Central Park were lovingly drawn, and her ethnography of the NYC mommy/kid/nanny culture was fascinating. show less

Emilia was a young lawyer in a prestigious law firm when she started her affair with Jack (partner in the firm), who then left his wife and son to marry Emilia. The story begins soon after Emilia's infant has died and she is deeply depressed about the loss of her child and struggling in her role as the stepmother to Jack's highly intelligent 5-year-old boy, Will. Emilia is, of course, hated by Will's mother, who is overly focused on the tiny details of Will's care. Jack is stuck in the middle between Emilia's depression and her young stepmother frustrations and his ex-wife. At first, it is hard to like Emilia, as she is unhappy and short-tempered with Will. But over time, Emilia begins to make tiny shifts in her efforts to bond with show more Will and when this occurs, the story gradually becomes more heartwarming. It is relatively easy to see the story from multiple perspectives and the characters richly described. I really enjoyed this novel and felt very attached to the main character by the end. show less

Ayelet Waldman's prose is not always as fluid and beautiful as people spoiled by the classics come to expect, but it is fairly fitting of the subject matter-- contemporary life in NYC, dealing with the problems of marriage and being a step-mother. These issues are ugly, dark, and unredeeming, and Waldman uses appropriately analytical, unsentimental language to tell her story. The characters seem exaggerated at times (especially the "precocity" of the little boy William who talks like a professor much of the time), but the overall themes of the book are very real and acute, and Waldman does a good job of developing the idea that love is not magical but something that requires a great deal of work and sacrifice (whether that be loving a show more step-child or a husband). Amelia, the protagonist, is spoiled and self-centered, intelligent, fairly witty, and ultimately a pretty deep person despite her spoiledness. She is able to overcome the big obstacles in the story, albeit not very gracefully, and gains some important insights on what life is about. show less

This was ChickLit, but it was quite enjoyable. The plot and characters were believable and the story was touching... although, I can't imagine a relationship with my husband where I would hide anything from him. Ah, well it's fiction - I'll try another by this author and see if it's as catchy.