Through Thick and Thin

Stephanie is an overwhelmed stay-at-home mom with a six-month-old. Her sister, Meredith, on the other hand, is hitting the two-year mark without a boyfriend-or even a decent date-but has a successful career as a food critic. Sometimes it seems the only thing these sisters share is their mutual desire to lose weight, so they decide to do it together. But will the strong desire for sisterhood outweigh their equally strong desire for comfort foods?

Publishers Weekly

Pace (Pug Hill ; If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend) delivers an endearing third novel about two sisters and their quests for companionship and an effective diet. Meredith Isley is very single and not so skinny. She's a restaurant critic for The NY magazine and finds in haute cuisine what she has trouble finding in romance: satisfaction. Across the Hudson, Meredith's sister, Stephanie, is a married new mother who was skinny growing up, but hasn't yet lost her pregnancy weight. Stephanie, too, fights her own loneliness and tries to survive motherhood and a troubled marriage. When both sisters decide to diet, what they gain, instead of pounds, is, not surprisingly, sometimes trite insight. Meredith's work begins to suffer, but a four-legged addition to her life heralds change. By craftily portraying the balancing act between work and play, family (be it four-legged or two) and friends, and food and fasting, Pace doesn't capture anything revolutionary; rather, she writes the ordinary well. (Aug.)

Alison Pace lives in New York City.