Overview
Five friends meet weekly at a restaurant called Yellowbird on New York's Upper East Side, revealing the long-hidden secrets of their pasts and how each, in her fashion, has become a survivor beyond all expectations. Texas-born Billie Redmond, the owner of Yellowbird, has come a long way from singing in her daddy's honky-tonk roadhouse. She escapes small town life for the glamour of New York City, where she can be a star like her idol Janis Joplin, and for a brief incandescent moment she lives her dream. But when the hits dry up, so do the high times, and Billie searches her soul to avoid the same fate as her idol. Beautiful, sexy, smart, and black, Felicity Johnson is a successful lawyer whose extramarital affair is part salvation, part invitation to disaster. It will take courage to finally escape from a loveless marriage but, she wonders, does she have the strength to break the self-destructive bond? Kathryn O'Mara Henry comes from a long line of Boston cops, including her hard-drinking father, who terrorizes the family. But one cold night her mother puts a violent end to the nightmare of abuse. From this hell, Kathryn develops into a vivacious and independent woman who finally finds a "good" man who can give her children the stability they need or scar them - and her - for life. Raised in Florida, Eve Bader is a free spirit who dreams of a career on the silver screen. She is so determined to make it as an actress in Hollywood that she forsakes her young daughter, Nicole, for a chance at stardom. Only when she starts a new life with her daughter in New York does she begin to prosper as an actress. But once again, her blind ambition threatens her relationship with her daughter, and friendship within the group. Gara Whiteman has worked hard to become a prominent psychologist, and after resolving her love/hate relationship with her controlling mother and a divorce from her husband of twenty-two years, she takes on the biggest struggle of her life - and is finallEditorials
Publishers Weekly -
Tracing the lives of five women over five decades, Jaffe takes another insightful look at female relationships, continuing the tradition she began in The Best of Everything. The women here are rather unlikely friends, since they come from different social and ethnic backgrounds and walks of life, but Jaffe makes their weekly meetings at a Manhattan restaurant credible. Born just before or after WWII, all have survived difficult childhoods in dysfunctional families and romantic and marital heartbreak as they struggle to achieve independence and serenity. One has endured breast cancer, a topic rendered here with rare authenticity and candor. Jaffe adroitly spins their stories in alternating chapters. A pro at this game, she writes smooth prose, builds character out of experience, keeps the action moving in soap-opera fashion and even manages some surprises. She also eschews giddy namedropping, instead establishing solid details of time and place. Perhaps her best character is the least sympathetic: obtuse, obnoxious actress Eve Bader, who has neither maternal instincts (she begrudges every minute and dollar she spends on her daughter) nor self-knowledge, but whose brassy personality dominates the pages. The other women offer a representative sampling of the social forces, familial pressures and personal goals that have influenced women over the past 50 years: a three-time divorce whose guilt about her past colors her future; a black literary lawyer who betrays her tyrannical husband as her own mother had betrayed her father; a clinical psychologist still smarting from the departure of her husband after 22 years of marriage; and a Janis Joplin-type singer who has fallen to the depths and climbed back. To her credit, Jaffe defies the conventional happy ending and leaves most of her characters with their lives still in flux. Literary Guild selection. (July)Library Journal
Jaffe again delves into the lives and relationships of a select group of American women. She started down this road with The Best of Everything (1958), in which she detailed the experiences of young working women in New York City. Fourteen novels later, in this same city, we encounter a group of mid-life friends: Gara, a divorced psychologist and cancer survivor; beautiful black attorney Felicity, married to a rich but controlling man; Kathryn, haunted by the brutality of her parents' marriage; the unabashedly narcissistic actress, Eve; and former rock star Billie, owner of the bar where they meet weekly. Scrutiny into their pasts and presents offers lively if predictable reading. Jaffe's fans will be looking for this title in their public libraries.Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.Kirkus Reviews
Plot is not a crucial element in this latest from the prolific Jaffe (The Cousins, 1995, etc.). Here, an exploration of five women's lives is light on action, heavy on melodrama.Every so often four friends—psychologist Gara Whiteman; attorney Felicity Johnson; twice-divorced, former suburban housewife Kathryn Henry; and minor-league actress Eve Bader—convene at Yellowbird, an Upper East Side restaurant/bar owned by onetime singing sensation and native Texan Billie Redmond. Each of the women has traveled a rocky path on her way to upper-middle- class (or higher) life in Manhattan; with the semi-regular meetings at Yellowbird the only device holding their stories together, each reveals her past, describes her present miseries and misfortunes, and, ultimately, moves on to a better and brighter future—thanks to a little (but not enough to connect the five stories adequately) help from their friends. Gara's longtime husband leaves her for another, much younger woman, and Gara is diagnosed with breast cancer. Felicity's husband is abusive—and her lover isn't much better. Kathryn is running from the many people who've hurt her in the past, including her alcoholic father and two undesirable husbands. And Eve, who's never made it big in Hollywood or on Broadway, is struggling with a daughter who's a star on screen and stage. In the meantime, Billie, after a series of hard knocks, has built Yellowbird into a success. Idiosyncratic as ever, she brings her young son to the bar every night, where's he's doted on by the patrons, including two transvestite regulars.
More a series of character sketches than a novel, though the story nonetheless manages to charm, thanks to Jaffe's lively, distinctly drawn protagonists.