Sere Prince Halverson's The Underside of Joy
This is the kind of book that almost seems to be written with book groups in mind--a big central issue to discuss (in this case, a custody battle) and lots of characters to dissect. But like with many book group/women's fiction type books, a lot of the characters are thinly sketched (all the protagonist's friends and especially her gay brother-in-law fall into this camp) and it all feels just a touch overwrought. And I only sort of appreciated the author's efforts to bring attention to Italians interned in camps in America during WWII. Anyway. When our story begins, Ella is living an idyllic life with her husband and his two children, whose mother left them years ago. But when her husband dies in an accident and his ex-wife turns up wanting custody of her children, things hightail into crazytown. I'm not even going to get into how ridiculous the end is--it didn't work for me at all, but like I said, this should be a strong book group book. B.
__
An e-galley was provided by the publisher. This book comes out on Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment