... glittering ... What follows over the course of the novel’s two decades isn’t as decisive as a breakup. Instead, Bauer explores the nuanced topic of how a person’s emotional metabolism can slow over time ... Bauer is the author of a previous novel, Frances and Bernard, and a memoir, Not That Kind of Girl. Her third book reveals a sharpened eye for social detail and a Laurie Colwin-esque ear for dialogue. The novel’s pockets of sentimentality are offset by streaks of viciousness, accurately reflecting how we tend to remember our pasts: happy times bathed in a distorting glow, miserable times diminished and disowned ... a love story about two friends, but it’s also something thornier — a narrative about the cycles of enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment that make up a life.
I loved reading every page ... brilliant, deliciously wry, not afraid to proceed to its destination. It pulls zero punches. It’s mature in a way that is hard to describe. It respects its characters and the reader enough to stay the course on its own terms. And that is a little difficult to accept at times, like real life. I loved it and will have no trouble recommending it to customers. But I’m going to spend between now and June refining my elevator pitch.
A gimlet-eyed look at the complexities of the friendship between two women over decades ... Bauer’s second novel questions the choices women are forced to make as they age, and the way those decisions unite or divide them. Bauer offers no easy answers nor pat conclusions, and her layered tale is all the stronger for it.
Appealing if aimless ... There’s not much of a plot, just a bunch of time in bars, clubs, and restaurants and conversations that don’t quite pass the Bechdel test...and by the end it just sort of fizzles out. Still, Bauer has a talent for exacting language, particularly when describing the characters’ attempts at navigating an era in which it feels like feminism is over .... There are better stories of moving to the city, but this makes for a charming enough time capsule.
Alcohol-soaked parties, abortions, marriages, affairs, a divorce, a death in the family, secrets, and betrayals all ensue, related with such cleareyed precision and honesty that only on the rarest of occasions does it tip over into sentimentality. Charlotte’s narration rings true for the discerning writer and editor she is; the prose is razor-sharp and utterly devoid of clutter. Though as a person she drifts and waffles...as a storyteller, she never loses focus ... With deftness and candor, Bauer tells a moving and thoughtful story of how desire and ambition change over time and how to make sense of the messiness of carving out a path and life of one’s own. A smart and beautifully rendered portrait of two women’s lives.
