Class Mothers by Katherine Stewart

Class Mothers open roughly 3 years after The Yoga Mamas ends. Laura’s daughter, Anna, is now enrolled as the scholarship student at The Metropolitan Preschool. In keeping with the times, this preschool is impossible to get into and the moms are all very competitive. Money is thrown around. Influence is thrown around. It feels like any number of fish-out-of-water books until a twist is thrown in: during an afternoon auction committee meeting the class hamster is found murdered. Four mothers are on the committee, four children were in the classroom with the teacher and no one saw who did it.

Instantly the mothers - not in view of the schools owner-principal, of course - start to draw lines and form alliances to make sure that their own child’s position at the school is safe. Laura, as the lone scholarship mom, finds herself in an odd place - some of the moms like her, but mostly she finds herself outside of their circles...a feeling that is compounded by her own insecurities. She fuels her inner Greek Chorus by giving weight to the pointed looks, paranoia, and standards of women she didn’t even know until her daughter started at their school.

In what she justifies as an effort to keep Anna in her exclusive pre-school and help her move up to an even more exclusive elementary school, Laura teams up with two of the other moms on the auction committee: Bronwyn, a seemingly perfect Manhattan Housewife and mother of two who treats Laura as equal parts friend and charity case, and Dominique, a French ex-model/actress who spends ninety percent of her time bemoaning the lack of passion and excitement in her life, despite having a devoted and doting husband and a lovely young daughter. All three are convinced that Kim’s son is the culprit based almost purely on Kim’s own behavior (as a working mom she feels that battle,) snide comments regarding Laura’s “disadvantaged” state, and nanny gossip.

The plot follows through parties, auction meetings, tailing Kim, yoga classes, lunches, dinners, even more tangled up backstabbing and ladder climbing, all the way up to when - somewhat predictably - Laura feels like her life is spinning out of control. Her daughter is pushing boundaries, her husband’s college girlfriend turns out to be one of the other preschool moms, and her contract deadline has come and gone with no inspiration in sight. Add to that the unravelling trust and friendship she had with Bronwyn and Dominique and it almost seems hopeless.

It’s not, of course. There’s the requisite epiphany followed by a flurry of activity and a satisfying resolution. Because we meet Laura first in The Yoga Mamas, her behavior follows what we already know to be true to her character and the other moms fall into their own cliches nicely.

All-in-all, it’s a satisfying chick read. It wouldn’t be out of place on the beach. My only issue is at the end, after the murder has been solved (as well as the auction drama) and everyone is happy...Stewart jumps the shark. Seriously. She has set up for another Laura book, but not of the Poor Fish in a Ritzy Pond style that we’ve already become familiar with. It could be great. It could prove to not be worth the paper it’s printed on. Either way, we’ll have to wait, because it doesn’t seem to be releasing any time soon.

Archangel, by Robert Harris

[ed: if I weren't so keen on getting these to be about 500 words every time, I would have posted four words regarding this book: Read it. Trust me.]




My only regret is that I didn’t pay attention to Nick Hornby the FIRST time he said he had the “cleverest brother in law” on the planet/ever in history/without a doubt. Because then I would have been reading these excellent works much earlier in life. As it is, I am having the uniquely wonderful experience of coming upon an addictive author late enough in his career that there is a catalogue of works already published, but not so late that there are no more forthcoming.

Archangel opens with a quote from Stalin: “Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.” (1918) When you turn the page, the stage is now in a Russian hotel room, at night, with a conversation between British Historian “Fluke” Kelso, whose focus is narrowed on Stalin, and a man, Papu Rapava, who was the bodyguard to one of Stalin’s inner-circle. The story Rapava tells focuses on the night of Stalin’s stroke, the refusal to send for doctors, and the theft of Stalin’s private notebook. The notebook had largely been regarded as myth, and as such discounted by all of Kelso’s contemporaries, who are in town with Kelso attending a symposium regarding the opening of Russia’s archives. If Rapava’s story is true, then the book is the salvation Kelso’s career needs. If Rapava’s story is true, then his life and Kelso’s are both in danger. If Rapava’s story is true, Stalinistic rule might once again come to Russia.

The next morning, after Rapava has fled the hotel, a very hungover Kelso makes his way out into modern (set in the late 1990s) Moscow to verify the story. By calling up a single contact, and speaking a single phrase over the phone lines being monitored by a government that is still paranoid, Kelso sets into motion a string of events that span Moscow and the northern woods of Russia. Harris weaves information of the way life was under Stalin seamlessly into the way life is after Stalin. Tales of torture and fear butt up against madmen whose only goal is to re-insert a Stalin Figure in the Kremlin. This is historical fiction at its best: accurate, insightful, and inspiring.

Kelso teams up with Rapava’s daughter and an American reporter named O’Brien. Together they unwind the mystery of the notebook. I know what you’re thinking: The DaVinci Code, The Boys From Brazil, and countless others have been suspenseful thrillers dealing with an historical leader who may or may not have left a legacy behind that will change the world. People will die to protect the secret just as there are those willing to die to expose it. This is true, and like those other novels I mentioned, this is well worth reading. I stayed up far beyond my body’s willingness to keep its eyes open just so I could get to that perfect ending that Harris does so well. The ending that you couldn’t exactly see coming until it was spilled across the page in front of and when you read the last word you know that it could have gone no other way. This is certainly a must read.

Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield is in mourning, but like any teenage boy who’s set on not being phony, he will not tell you this. Instead, he will tell you everything else about his life, the people in it, the movies, the cabs, the schools, and what he thinks of them. Repeatedly. In a single breath.

Salinger’s classic manages to get into the head of a truly angst-ridden and confused teenage boy so well that he has been emulated repeatedly through the decades. Just find the guy on the show/in the book who hates everything except one girl (in Holden’s case, his little sister) and who doesn’t care who knows it and you’re looking at someone who has interred a bit of Holden in himself.

The novel opens with the revelations that Holden has been expelled from yet another boarding school. We’re never sure how many schools he’d been to before Pencey, only that this latest expulsion is just one in a long line of them and he has no qualms about those that came before or those that are likely to come after. He doesn’t like school - it’s full of phonies. He doesn’t like his roommate, who is “yearbook handsome” but a phony, and an irritating womanizing phony at that. He doesn’t like his neighbor, who is a bore and a phony. Cab drivers are phony, bartenders are phonies, most of the people - with the exception of the brother he is mourning and his younger sister - are phonies.

In order to cope with his unsatisfactory world and to also put off the inevitable confrontation with his parents, Holden leaves school in the middle of the night, 4 days before it’s due to break for Christmas anyway. He gathers up his suitcases and his money and take a train into New York, where he proceeds to behave in a way that has had People Who Feel The Need To Control What You Can Read up in arms since the day the book was published. This, of course, has made it wildly popular. Foul language pours out of Holden’s mouth of its own accord, it would be turrets except that it’s buried in sentences that are both circular and insightful. Salinger’s phrasing is memorable: “give her the time,” “yearbook handsome,” “roller-skate skinny.” The list goes on and on. It’s tempered with the aforementioned circuitousness of Holden’s thought process - a combination that gives him depth and believability.

There’s the thing of it. Reading Holden’s train of thought (which is the way this book is written) can be exhausting. He rarely pauses for breath, he is often angry and borderline hostile and hateful and then will turn on a dime and wax poetic about his sister, or the ducks in Central Park. He describes experiences with his deceased brother with the same fervor as he condemns the phoniness of his older brother’s new career and you believe that both characters probably exist as people somewhere in the world. Even Holden, who is telling the story in a way that is therapeutic to both the character and the reader, exists many times over in the world...and that is what keeps this book relevant, even in an age where walking down the street without your tie is not scandalous.

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, by Beth Fantaskey

Jessica is adopted, a fact which her hippie parents have never kept from her. She was born in Romania but adopted as an infant and raised in America on a farm. She’s pretty typical: mathlete, equestrian, mildly popular...and then one morning a tall, dark, handsome and vaguely creepy exchange student lurks in the mist by her bus stop and derails all of her precisely laid out senior year plans. He shows up in her classes and seems only to have eyes for her. A creepy boyfriend was definitely not on her agenda, and she frequently wills his attention to stray to any of the myriad girls who swoon over him, only to find out that he is destined to be in her life.

She immediately enters the first of the five stages of grief: denial.

Lucius is apparently staying on their farm. He is their exchange student and it is soon made clear that he has designs on Jessica. It’s immediately obvious that he is different but while her parents say “Vampire” she says “freaky cult” right up until the moment she needs to give in or Fantaskey knows her readers will stray.

In a refreshing spin on the teenage vampire love story, it is revealed that our heroine is not just adopted from a Romanian family, but adopted from a Royal Romanian Vampire family and is betrothed to Lucius she moves directly into stage two: Anger.

There are fights, rages, blow-ups. Everything needed to make this teen drama a..well...a drama. Every emotion Jessica externalizes (or internalizes in some cases) is believable, from her body image to her understandable resistance to a life that has already been chosen for her. After the dust settles she moves into stage three, bargaining, which is muddled by her wafting in and out of stage four: depression.

She lets Lucius into her life, but only on her terms and not always without a fight. Their relationship is believable in a way that someone who still remembers being seventeen can create. Fantaskey gives us jealous friends and would-be boyfriends constantly coming between Jessica and Lucius. Their friendship blossoms and then get trampled - on both sides.

Lucius’ thoughts on the unfolding events are revealed to the reader throughout the book in letters to his uncle, the vicious vampire who sent him to retrieve his promised bride. His expounds on the food, culture of high school, and of course his pursuit of Jessica… all with the stiff air of someone writing out of obligation and not of love and the desire to share. Even this is refreshing...a vampire with a tender heart of gold is something we’re starting to expect.

And then Jessica turns 18. This is it: the culmination. She now decides her future. After all of the drama and growth can she accept who she is? Will she walk away from her destiny? And what does it mean for Lucius, for herself, when his true nature is revealed to their entire school? Only after she tackles a court of abusive vampires and travels around the globe will we find out.

Paradise Lost: A Private Novel, By Kate Brian

Revelation (the previous Private novel) did two things: it wrapped up a plot which was dangerously close to having been drawn out too long and it ended in such a way that when I turned the last page hoping (in vain) for more I let out an audible “Argh!” Two months later Paradise Lost is released and we discover that (spoiler alert!) our favorite Glass-Licker is not dead. Ok, that’s only slightly a spoiler since the series is written in first person and as long as there is news of the next book in the series there’s a good chance she won’t die. I might have to eat those words one of these days.

The “Paradise” in question is St. Barths, where Reed is “dragged” by Noelle, Kiran, and an apologetic Tiffany (apologetic for things which happened in previous novels.) Since we all know that you don’t say No to Noelle, Reed finds herself on the Lange jet heading to stay at the Lange beach house over Christmas vacation. All of this is an attempt to take her mind off of the recent events, namely lots of stalking, deception, being ostracized by the aforementioned Noelle, Kiran, and Tiffany, and death. (This is not Gossip Girl, despite the abundance of couture, underage drinking, and sex.) The group of girls expands to include the previously removed to public-school Taylor, who is not only alive but appears to be thriving outside of the strict confines of Easton Academy and Billings Hall.

Between the shopping, lounging on the beach, and being generally paranoid, Reed finds herself drawn into what the rest of the girls call “The Upton Game,” the goal of which is to be the first girl of the group to “hook up” with Upton Giles who is, according to Noelle, the hottest man on the planet.

Because this is Fun Vacation Reed, she decides to let the other girls have the drama of the chase and just relax. Until she sees him. Naturally, Teen Romance ensues. On its heels are Teen Jealousy, Teen BackStabbing, Teen Pranks, and Teen Paranoia...all sprinkled amidst island fun which includes everything from jet skiing to Casino Night in Couture. And don’t forget the cliff-hanger at the end. The one that sent me to computer to see when the next book is coming out. (No answer on that one.)

I’ve read this entire series, including the prequel. I find the characters believable and the plot engaging. We all knew the rich girls at school who seemed charmed, the boy who was a bit lecherous and the shy boys, the athletes, the whiny-eager-to-please puggle girl (I quoted the book on that one because it fits so well) and in their Private incarnations they could feel two-dimensional...ok I’m not going to lie: some of them do. Luckily for us, Brian has kept those in the background, only showing up to give you a feel for the Very Large Group of privileged teens romping on the island with Reed. The characters in the a-plot, certainly ten books into the series, all feel well rounded to the point that Taylor popping up on the island was like an old friend showing up unexpectedly.

Now when does that next book come out…?