Started reading this in a digital ARC, but it didn't grab me
immediately. It did in book form,
though. I really liked her book Laura
Lamont's Life in Pictures and it stayed with me quite a bit. This one will as well. Although when I started it, I was like, ooh
white people problems, it did draw me in.
The characters: a couple whose husband just cheated on his wife and got fired from his
job, her best friend and his husband, their grown son and his girlfriend, and
their daughter who is off to college in the fall. They all stay in a house on
Mallorca. Marvelous character and relationship writing; I
loved the depictions of both Franny (the cheated-upon wife) and Sylvia (the daughter, who has her first crush and is crushed). Just spot-on.
And a quote I loved:
"Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about." (p. 29)