Author: Suzanne Jenkins
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
This is the start of a series, believe it or not, of which the second volume has already been released. Curiously, I’m actually starting with the first volume for a change, but I don’t plan of reading any more of this series. I;m not a series fan unless it's exceptional and this isn't.
Pam Smith is spoiled rotten, so I guess it’s hardly surprising that she’s the most placid mammal in existence. She thinks her husband is having an affair, but would rather not drop that stone into the mirror-surface of her little pond of joy. She’s rolling in money to the point where she doesn’t have to work. Indeed, she doesn’t choose to work, living a fifties house-wife existence in a luxurious beach-front house on Long Island.
Her Husband, the bread winner, is a complete slut. After he dies, apparently of a heart attack on the train traveling out to visit his wife for the weekend (she lives like a kept woman in her snazzy isolation while he travels into "the city" and do the work during the week), he apparently is robbed, yet the thieves inexplicably take everything but his phone. It’s this phone which leads to an unraveling of Pam’s life, because the last person Jack (yes, he’s another jack-ass) called on it was his mistress. Which mistress? The young one – not the kept woman who is his wife or any other of his mistresses.
I honestly cannot believe a hospital would be either so stupid or so insensitive to blindly assume that the last person a person calls has to be an immediate relative! Rather than leave it to the police or try to find contact info on the phone, what we get here is the hospital calling Sandra the Mistress, not Pam the wife, yet somehow Pam manages to show up at the hospital at the same time as Sandra and the two meet. Instead of fighting, Pam hugs Sandra and the two embark upon a friendship.
The children of Pam and Jack are evidently in college, and Pam is insensitive enough to deliver the news that dad is dead over the phone rather than get off her idle ass and go pick them up and deliver the news in person. The novel is so vague (on some things and inexplicably running into endless detail on others) that it didn’t say where the kids were, but unless they were across the country (which isn’t the impression I got), this seemed cold if not callous. From that point on I didn’t like her, and that wasn’t the only thing about her which was objectionable.
One thing which bothered me was what seemed to be Pam’s consistent 1950’s take on life. She was the stay-at-home domesticated mom who didn’t seem to have a life or any real interest in having one. She didn’t work, she didn’t seem like she was involved in any trusts, or foundations or charities, and she didn’t seem like she had ever been involved in any of the financial dealings pertinent to home-ownership and paying bills.
Her worst betrayal of feminism however, was when she sets off for the funeral and we read that her son Brent is driving the car. That was fine, but Pam’s observation about Brent was: “He was the man of the family now.” What? Pam is the adult, and she has a daughter, too, but Brent is the man of the house? Neither female need apply for any position of responsibility?
This was at odds with Pam’s protestation, earlier, that she wanted to be in charge of her destiny and that what she chose to do - and whom she chose to befriend - was none of anyone else’s business. It didn’t make any sense. It seemed like a complete reversal to me.
It wasn't he only thing which didn't make sense. Take this sentence: "She remembered her grandmother’s perfume, Cashmere Bouquet. The smell of it was so dry it brought tears to her eyes." The smell was so dry? I'm not even going to try to work that one out.
In short, this novel was tedious and not even remotely interesting. I couldn't finish it and I certainly cannot recommend the parts I did read.
