A popular advice columnist for 40 years, Wendy Wise decides to meddle in her own troubled daughters' lives even though they are holding on some resentments from childhood, while her daughters discover that Wendy has been hiding more than a few problems of her own.
Very entertaining ... Sorell assembles an eccentric cast of side characters ... Real-life issues are dealt with here — infidelity, gentrification, regret, affordable housing, aging — but because of the bright prose and offbeat cast, I was never too worried. This world is funnier and friendlier than our own; it’s a place where drama is offset by absurd family dynamics and housing crises are avoided with madcap solutions. I was always happy to return to The Wise Women, safely amused by the witty dialogue and disasters, confident that things would work out in the end.
A layered story of New York City’s gentrifying outer boroughs and an advice columnist who tries to help her two grown daughters ... A somewhat contrived set of coincidences ... Sorell does a fine job describing neighborhood tensions and the city’s real estate scene, though the story wraps up a bit too neatly. This gets the job done, but its pleasures are fleeting.
