Synopses & Reviews
With wry candor and tender humor, acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what.
For Emilia Greenleaf, life is by turns a comedy of errors and an emotional minefield. Yes, she's a Harvard Law grad who married her soul mate. Yes, they live in elegant comfort on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But with her one-and-only, Jack, came a stepson a know-it-all preschooler named William who has become her number one responsibility every Wednesday afternoon. With William, Emilia encounters a number of impossible pursuits such as the pursuit of cab drivers who speed away when they see William's industrial-strength car seat and the pursuit of lactose-free, strawberry-flavored, patisserie-quality cupcakes, despite the fact that William's allergy is a figment of his over-protective mother's imagination.
As much as Emilia wants to find common ground with William, she becomes completely preoccupied when she loses her newborn daughter. After this, the sight of any child brings her to tears, and Wednesdays with William are almost impossible. When his unceasing questions turn to the baby's death, Emilia is at a total loss. Doesn't anyone understand that self-pity is a full-time job? Ironically, it is only through her blundering attempts to bond with William that she finally heals herself and learns what family really means.
Review
"Compelling and artfully drawn....The novel is beautifully paced and unfolds seamlessly, but as it builds, there's a disconcerting sense that Emilia is not telling the whole story and she isn't." The Washington Post
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"The beauty of Waldman's writing is her ability to...mak[e] Emilia a sympathetic and likable character even at her most frustrating. Waldman avoids contrivances and easy answers even as she moves the novel toward a surprising and rewarding conclusion." Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is neither a trite nor a frivolous love story. It is original and refreshing, told in a surprisingly honest voice. It is the voice of Ayelet Waldman, one that we look forward to hearing again." South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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"[A] wonderful book, engaging and startlingly honest....[T]he story is so compelling...that you stick by [Emilia] almost out of loyalty. And it's worth it." Providence Journal
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"The characters...are well-drawn and complex....While the subject matter seems grim, there is plenty of humor, and Waldman is a razor-sharp observer of modern life. Her fast-paced and endearing novel is a keeper." San Antonio Express-News
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"[T]he 32 chapters of Love click by briskly; lubricated by plenty of dialogue and plenty of sex, some funny and some carrying more than a note of exhibitionism....offers some felicitous writing and a satisfying end." Cleveland Plain Dealer
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"Love and Other Impossible Pursuits can be gobbled up in just a sitting or two, zipping along toward its dependably cathartic climax." Los Angeles Times
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"It's Emilia's relationship with her stepson, not her husband, that forms the book's backbone....And no matter Emilia's state (furious, resentful, at peace or otherwise), she's always sharp, wickedly funny, opinionated and cheerfully bitter, lending depth and energy to this wise, entertaining book." San Francisco Chronicle
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"Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is clearly out to irritate some Mommy groups. It may also be the first chick-lit novel...that in addition to being a romantic, shocking and sometimes painful page-turner does the unthinkable: it actually says something new and interesting about women, families and love." New York Times
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"Ayelet Waldman...looks past headlines and into the heart. What she finds there is hope for us all." Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
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"I thought the heroine was a great accomplishment....And William is a triumph." Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce
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"I read this book in one sitting while lying on my favorite couch. And I'll read it again on a future road trip. And I'll read it for a third time in the bathtub. Ayelet Waldman is that good." Sherman Alexie, author of Ten Little Indians
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"[T]he most riveting and sharply rendered novel I've read in years....Once you begin this book, there will be no putting it down. Once you've finished, you will never forget it." Julie Orringer, author of How To Breathe Underwater
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"Waldman makes the reader laugh at the spectacle of a mother trying to manufacture love for one child, while making the reader tearful about the loss of another child. In the end, this novel conjures up the magical balance of both." Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon
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"A beautiful novel. If you are not moved to tears, then your heart is carved from wood." Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Synopsis
Harvard Law graduate Emilia Greenleaf's perfect life with her beloved Jack is turned upside down by her new preschool-age stepson, William, a situation that is further complicated when she loses her own newborn daughter, but it is through William that she begins to heal and to discover what family really means. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
Synopsis
Waldman's provocative new novel now in paperback provides an emotionally gripping, unflinchingly honest look at what it's like to live and love in the real world.
Synopsis
Ever since she was a little girl, Emilia believed that she was intended for only one man her other half. She was sure that upon seeing each other for the first time, they would know they were meant to be. That Jack could have married someone else before Emilia found him had never entered her mind. She certainly didn't bank on William, his precocious five-year-old boy who now that he is Emilia's step-son has become her responsibility every Wednesday afternoon. An obsessive know-it-all and his mother's mouthpiece, he is always one step ahead of her as she negotiates the mystifying world of the Manhattan pre-schooler.
Synopsis
In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one womans passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.
Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson - and attempting to find balance in a new family thats both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one womans search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.
About the Author
Ayelet Waldman is the author of Daughter's Keeper and of the Mommy-Track mystery series. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Believer, Child magazine, and other publications, and she has a regular column on Salon.com. She and her husband, the novelist Michael Chabon, live in Berkeley, California, with their four children.