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摘要
摘要
A witty tale of marriage and midlife longing, as a taked-for-granted-wife pursues a fantasy love via e-mail.
评论 (2)
出版社周刊评论
"I feel as if the only time anyone even talks to me is to complain or criticize or to place an order for something they need," laments frustrated wife and mother Beth Riordan in this debut novel of frustrated domesticity. Indeed, Cook gives ample proof at the outset that Beth's husband Pete and children Margot, 14, Chloe, 13, and PJ, 10, notice Beth only when they run out of coffee or toilet paper. But Beth finds a secret way to make her life exciting. In between driving the kids to predawn swim practices, keeping the household running and working as a freelance quotation researcher, Beth starts an e-mail friendship with travel writer Thomas Marsh, her older neighbor, whose wife has recently left him. (She is Swimslave; he is Wanderlust.) Soon their e-correspondence escalates to e-flirtation, and the tension of whether or not their budding relationship will be consummated keeps the plot going at a decent clip. While the premise is entirely believable--lonely, insecure housewife living in a pokey Boston suburb pours out her heart electronically--the plot takes several contrived, unrealistic turns. Beth signs up for an expensive female-bonding wilderness week, but when the group arrives at their secluded island, she whines about the lack of air conditioning. The adolescent tone persists, ending at Beth's high school reunion when she walks out of the bathroom with toilet paper hanging out of the back of her pants. Despite its cliched elements, the narrative has some witty scenes of domestic miscommunication, and Cook's perky take on midlife angst will undoubtedly appeal to women who fantasize about changing their lives. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
A lackluster debut, written in the form of e-mails, attempts drama but simply illustrates through its own flatness the detachment of online relationships. Forty-something Beth begins a quasi e-mail romance with her next-door neighbor after a chance meeting at the library. Her increasingly revelatory postings, which begin innocently enough, tell of her dulling marriage, the drudgery of driving her daughters to swim practice at five o'clock every morning, and her less-than-exhilarating profession of cataloguing quotes for desk calendars. Not an exciting life for Beth--or for the reader to share in. Then into her still-undiagnosed mid-age crisis comes Thomas, the neighbor in question. At first glance (all Beth really gets), he seems wonderfully breezy, spending much of his time out of town writing travel guides, but not the Morocco-Bali-Peru kind: his latest effort is a walking tour of Laughlin, Nevada. To Beth, however, Thomas seems the epitome of daring adventure, and the assorted sprigs of humor in the story are born from the inflated opinion she has of Thomas (only Beth's e-mails are available, yet hints of Thomas's personality can be gleaned from her responses to his). Although he e-mails her rarely, Beth writes constantly, going so far as to take a laptop on her first-ever sans-family vacation, a kind of Outward Bound for middle-aged women. She offers an almost instant replay of the day's events, which challenge her physically and spiritually, presumably enabling her to find the goddess within. Well-intentioned, and at times quite prescient in the analysis of the holes women dig for themselves--Beth creates a quite obvious caretaker relationship with Thomas--Cook's debut nonetheless plods. Even the surprise denouement isn't enough to combat the doldrums Beth experiences and passes on to the reader. A modest first effort in need of greater depth to ballast the weight of its subject. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.