REASON CHOSEN: "I like the author's previous books, so I hope this one is as good!"
Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter is delightfully packed with many of the requisite elements of a good chick-lit novel: A handsome husband (Nick) who has an impressive job (pediatric plastic surgeon); a smart, good-looking wife (Tessa) with an Ivy League education; a house in a tony suburb of a sophisticated city – in this case Wellesley, outside of Boston.
Tessa once taught at Wellesley College, but she has given that up to be a stay-at-home mom, where she surrounds herself with tennis-playing mom-friends who obsess about such matters as what sort of healthy snack is acceptable when you're the class mom in charge of that duty for the day.
Tessa begins to wonder if she's made the right decision to stay at home. Her marriage to Nick becomes strained as she starts to feel less certain about herself and her choices. Nick spends so much time at work that she starts to feel he has abandoned his role in co-parenting.
This is the stuff of tried-and-true chick-lit. But Giffin has always been more ambitious than many writers of the genre. Her first novel, Something Borrowed (2004), was about two just-30 friends, one of whom begins an affair with the other's fiancé. Giffin's second book, Something Blue (2005), told the exact same story from the point of view of the other woman in that triangle.
In Heart of the Matter, Giffin delivers her best book yet. Once again she plays with the idea of point of view, but this time she wraps it into a single, tightly written narrative that creates an addictive page-turning sense of tension.
Giffin starts the first chapter with Tessa's story, narrating in the first-person. But in the next chapter, she introduces us to a second character, Valerie, delivering Valerie's story in the third-person. The novel continues in this fashion, alternating between Tessa and Valerie.
Valerie is just as smart and well-educated as Tessa. She also lives in Wellesley, and her only child attends a private school with the children of Tessa's friends. But Valerie has a tad bit less of a storybook life. She doesn't really fit in with many of the Wellesley moms, but her adorable son Charlie seems to be doing fine in school – until he suffers severe burns while attending a classmate's birthday party. He needs plastic surgery on his hand and face.
Enter handsome doctor Nick. Do you see where this is going?
The plot is not terribly complicated or surprising, but what makes this novel special are the emotional depths to which Giffin takes her readers. You know the story cannot end completely happily ever after for either woman – just as Charlie will always have scars from his burns, the fabric of these two families' lives will forever bear the patterns of the rips and tears of this emotional hurricane. The question of what the aftermath can possibly look like for these two likable characters is what keeps readers glued to Giffin's engaging tale.
Buy it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Matter-Emily-Giffin/dp/0312554168
No comments:
Post a Comment