Elisabeth, until recently a successful NYT journalist and nonfiction author, is a new mother. Her husband, Andrew, has taken job at a local women’s college in upstate New York to be near his aging parents. Having left her job to care for baby Gilbert, Elisabeth now finds herself cut off from her beloved Brooklyn community and adrift in suburbia. With nothing in common with most of the women on her new street, Elisabeth develops a perhaps too-close relationship with the Sam, a senior at the college, who she hires to babysit Gil so she can work on her third book, which is going nowhere. While Andrew’s parents are proud grandparents, neither of Elisabeth’s wealthy divorced parents have made the effort to even visit and meet Gil. Theirs had been a troubled family, and Elisabeth’s sister, a self-styled Internet “influencer” living an online life in the Caribbean, is also trouble. Perhaps it’s for the best they are estranged. However, in a weak moment, Elisabeth has loaned her sister most of her own savings from her best-selling books. She hasn’t told Andrew. Sam, from a poor family, is impressed with Elisabeth’s seemingly enviable life. She has another job, as a kitchen helper at the college, and has become close with several of the women there, who are all from Mexico and living close to the edge financially. Sam is conflicted as to whether to marry the charming, but much older, Clive, who she met in England the previous year. Themes of trust, friendship, class, and the misunderstandings that happen when well-meaning people assume they understand other people’s lives and try to “help” them, make this an interesting read. 395 pp.
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