JerryB

  Woman No. 17 - Edan Lepucki : So I almost forgot that I'd starting dancing with this book a few days ago, then set it aside ... only to have it "call to me" again today. The good thing about "dancing" with books, experiencing multiple "dance partners", as opposed to "committing", gingerly, to a particular book and hoping for the best, is that one can do this, and give full rein to the ever-changing currents of one's reading preferences, but still make progress on what turns out to be a wider field of book types than I ever would have even considered back in my more "monogamous" reading days.

So yes, I restarted the book — I was only about 5-6 short chapters into it anyway, when I'd set it aside — semi-skimming the contents that I'd read before, and then gliding forward into uncharted territory with much greater alacrity than I'd felt when I reached the same point several days ago. In this book, Lepucki sets up an interesting situation where the narration alternates in relatively large (multiple-chapter-long) "chunks" between two women: Narrator one, a separated mother named Lady with two sons from two different fathers, the elder son, Seth, himself an interesting character — a college freshman — who is able to speak but who simply does not speak; Lady is the reticent possessor of a book contract, said book to be about her experiences as the mother of a boy such as Seth, in conjunction with her experiences as a mother of Seth's (much) younger, precocious, more-than-a-little-bratty brother Devin. And Narrator two, the "nanny"/au pair hired by Lady to do —what exactly? — who turns out to be something of a refugee from a failed/rejected gig doing socially-aware "art" as a student in Berkeley, the citizens of which looked less than favorably upon her efforts; she is reinventing herself in southern California with a job that pays only marginal homage to her academic background, and with a new name that bears only the lightest possible connection to her old, "original" name. Both narrators, just to stir the pot a bit more, have complicated, conflicted relationships with their mothers.

That's the basic situation, as well as I'm able to size it up at this early point of the novel; we'll see what Lepucki does with it.