Much Ado about Jessie Kaplan

From the bestselling author of Jane Austen in Boca, “another witty tale that combines classic literature with contemporary social comedy.”—-Hartford Courant

Carla Goodman’s life in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is a little bit stressful these days. Her doctor husband is frazzled, her son’s teachers say he needs Ritalin, and she’s in the throes of planning her daughter’s bat mitzvah. But it’s her sweet widowed mother, Jessie Kaplan, who really has Carla worried, for Jessie has suddenly “remembered” that she was Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of the Sonnets in a previous life. Can even the famed Dr. Leonard Samuels, psychiatrist and author of the self-help book, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Mother-in-Law, help with a problem like this?

Witty, engaging, and wickedly observant, Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan is an unpredictable tale of love, loss, and family rites of passage.

Praise for Jane Austen in Boca:

"Page-turner of the week...Austen never shmoozed by the pool with a pack of bronzed yentas, but her PRIDE plot proves as durable as ever...What's not to like?"

—People Magazine

"Utterly charming...think Pride and Prejudice, but with better weather."—Vanity Fair

"Cohen's wit is sharp, smart and satirical, and her characterizations are vividly on target."

—San Francisco Chronicle

Publishers Weekly

A looming bat mitzvah and a mother who believes she's the reincarnation of Shakespeare's Dark Lady cause no end of trouble for the suburban heroine of this corny but hilarious second novel by Cohen (Jane Austen in Boca). Carla Goodman of Cherry Hill, N.J., is saddled with a 12-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who seems to be in "a perpetual state of PMS," a 10-year-old son, Jeffrey, who is "on his way to becoming a fifth-grade delinquent," and a gastroenterologist husband who is having trouble maintaining a private practice ("It's one thing to look up butts and get rich.... It's another to do it for nickel and dimes"). At the same time, Carla's widowed mother, Jessie, starts making references to mead and doublets, apparently remembering her former life as the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Cohen, who is developing a sparkling reputation for bringing the classics into contemporary fiction, paints in broad strokes but hits the mark with this domestic comedy. When Carla turns to renowned psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Samuels, famous for his bestselling How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Mother-in-Law, for advice, the humor escalates. Anyone-Jewish or not-who has ever attended a bat or bar mitzvah will find Cohen's take on the preparations and planning for this rite of passage spot on. By the end of this thoroughly entertaining romp, the author convincingly resolves all of Carla's family dilemmas with large doses of humor and heart. Agent, Felicia Eth. (May) Forecast: Few writers aim so directly-and successfully-at the AARP set. Cohen has already reaped the rewards (one online reader reports she gave Jane Austen in Boca to her grandmother, who passed it on to six others in her assisted living community), and sales should be correspondingly strong for this second novel. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Paula Marantz Cohen is Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She is the author of five nonfiction books, including Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth and The Daughter as Reader: Encounters Between Literature and Life, as well as the novel Jane Austen in Boca. She lives in Moorestown, New Jersey, with her husband and two children.