Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
What to say about any audiobook narrated by Meryl Streep? Thirty years after its original publication, Ephron's comic novel has finally come to audio starring the actress who played Rachel Samstat in the 1986 film adaptation. In her the narration, Streep perfectly captures Rachel's self-deprecating humor, resulting in some laugh-out-loud scenes of comic genius. Streep makes us root for Rachel, even as we cringe at her misguided attempts to reconcile with her straying husband. Much of the novel is told through exposition rather than dialogue, so it's imperative that Streep capture Rachel's sense of irony without resorting to bitterness-which she does flawlessly. Streep also creates spot-on voices for the cast of mostly upper-crust characters, including dear friend Richard and various Washington swells. A Vintage paperback. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wife Discovers Husband's Infidelity, Must Decide What To Do: that's the routine sliver of plot here. But essentially this slender first novel is just a framework for an Ephronesque series of stand-up-comic routines, journalistic one-liners, and movie-farce-style vignettes--an occasionally funny but edgily unsatisfying tsimmes. The wisecracking narrator is cookbook-writer/TV-celebrity Rachel Samstat, who one day realizes that her Washington-columnist husband Mark Feldman, the ultimate ""Jewish prince,"" is having an affair with Thelma Rice, giant wife of a blitheringly neurotic Undersecretary of State. Mark confesses--but doesn't offer to give Thelma up. Spurred on by celebrity-shrink Vera (""every so often she has to fly off to co-host Merv Griffin""), pregnant Rachel storms off to her beloved N.Y.C. with tot Sam while reviewing her marriages (#1 was ""a low-grade lunatic who kept hamsters""). She rejoins her therapy group--which gets robbed. She flies back to D.C. when Mark seems interested in a reconciliation. But finally, after giving birth, Rachel tells Mark off, throws a pie in his face, and instantly winds up in the arms of an adorable New Yorker for an upbeat fadeout. Throughout, Ephron fails to find the right balance between satire and soap--reaching for laughs (and canceling out empathy) with outlandish cartoon shriek, then lurching for the heart-strings with Rachel's crying-behind-the-jokes sentimentality. (""Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much,"") Only one moment lifts off into inspired, manic-but-believable comedy: Rachel, in a desperate/vengeful panic, spreads the rumor that Thelma has gotten a gynecological infection. (In a Vietnamese restaurant: ""The toilet seat, I guess. . . although I'm not sure. Maybe from the spring rolls."") And the rest consists of Rachel's uneven musings on being Jewish, being in Washington, being Jewish in Washington, the Sixties, Phil Donahue, Lillian Hellman, the Eastern Airlines shuttle, cellulite, sex, shrinks, marriage, and cooking. Plus: lots of not-quite-funny aphorisms (""Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in winter and I'll show you a real asshole""); tired send-ups of Women's Lib; and many, many recipes. (My Search for Warren Harding, p. 206, also was big on recipes: is this the new trend in cute-fiction substitutes for content?) More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some of Gall Parent's too. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
