Los Angeles Times Book Review
'No one has told Schulman that a story can't be about everything.'
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
Schulman (The Revisionist) concocts a wacky, high-spirited romp of a romance, pairing up her heroine with a lover who has returned from the dead or has he? Divorced, 30-something Louise Harrington, acting admissions coordinator for Columbia University's graduate fine arts program, is paging through applications when a familiar name catches her eye and sets her mind reeling. "Feinstadt, Scott" could it possibly be the rebellious, artistically talented high school boy she was crazy about, who died in a car accident 20 years earlier on his way to his first year at college? The potential grad student's name is actually F. Scott Feinstadt, but the similarities same birth date (though different year), same background and so forth abound, as Louise discovers when she meets F. Scott for a trumped-up, in-person interview. After a slow start, Schulman picks up the pace with witty observations about Louise and her ex-husband Peter's dysfunctional co-dependence, Louise's stormy friendship with scheming high school classmate Missy and her ongoing frustration with her mother. Schulman has created a winning character in Louise, whose favorite pastime since her divorce is "to list reasons for not killing herself" one of which is that her obnoxious brother "would get all the inheritance." The author has a marvelous knack for capturing contemporary relationships, replete with complicated subtexts, family baggage and societal pressures that make the prospect of finding a healthy love relationship nearly impossible. A certain glossiness a surfeit of brand names and a fixation on questions of lifestyle keeps the novel from going too deep, but Schulman's delightful, piquant tale gives a clever, unusual account of how its protagonist learns to let go of the past. Author tour. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Novelist/nonfiction author Schulman (The Revisionist, 1998, etc.) offers yet another tale of an angst-ridden late-thirtysomething obsessing about relationships. She's smart, she's attractive, she's got a good job, and none of that means much to Louise Harrington because the men in her life . . . aren't. That is, either they're not actually in her life, or they don't really qualify as men in any grown-up sense of the word. Two exceptions: (1) physics professor Peter Harrington (good, kind), but Louise divorced him four years ago for reasons she still can't quite come to grips with, and (2) Scott Feinstadt. The trouble with Scott is that he died in 1960. Or did he? Suddenly, mysteriously, there's reason to wonder. Louise, acting admissions coordinator at Columbia University, comes across a startling, unnerving application—from Scott Feinstadt. Flashback to her senior year at suburban Larchmont High, when the adored if elusive Feinstadt was her very reason for being, when she stalked him assiduously enough to convert detachment into something that could pass for responsiveness. Never mind that she subsequently lost him to her unscrupulous best friend, then lost him permanently in a highway accident. He remained the one, true love of her life. And now, incredibly here's this "recycled" Feinstadt, a painter, too, exactly like his forerunner. Born on the very same day, would you believe. Residing in Mamaroneck, a stone's throw from Larchmont. But, lucky Louise, this one turns out to be an improved Feinstadt: equally handsome, more erotically adept, and sweeter-natured to boot. If only she could be absolutely certain he wasn't a ghost. The back-from-the-dead premise is such astretch, and Louise is so whining, wheedling, groveling, and desperately seeking that—in her own description—she lacks dignity. Which goes to the heart of why it's so hard to like her. Author tour
