This is Where We Live
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Life is beautiful for Claudia and Jeremy. They are a young, bohemian couple whose hard work in both the film and music world is finally paying off. Claudia's first film is in the can and Jeremy and his band are going places. Now seems like the perfect time to settle down and buy a house.
But this is summer 2008, and the credit crunch is round the corner. In a matter of weeks Claudia's film becomes a box-office flop, Jeremy's band stalls and - worst of all - they find themselves unable to pay the mortgage, with the bank threatening repossession. The life they've been dreaming of comes tumbling down around them. Claudia takes a teaching job in attempt to placate the bank, and suddenly everything their relationship has been built on looks precarious. Jeremy sees her 'selling out' as a betrayal of their bohemian values, and when his glamorous ex-girlfriend Aoki, a famous painter, returns to LA, Claudia starts to realise that her relationship is in danger of disintegrating unless she does something to save it...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Married 30-something artists Claudia and Jeremy Munger are the unlucky anchors of Brown's shaky sophomore novel, an of-the-moment time capsule in the mold of her well-received All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. Claudia is a filmmaker whose first feature is about to be released; Jeremy is a musician on the brink of mainstream success; together they are living in boho splendor in a newly purchased L.A. bungalow. But when Claudia's film bombs, Jeremy's band breaks up, their adjustable rate mortgage balloons, and Jeremy's famous painter ex-girlfriend, Aoki, comes back on the scene, the Mungers' sense of themselves is harshly tested. The gauntlets the Mungers face verge on Kafkaesque, yet the novel proceeds with painful earnestness. Particularly detracting are the one-note supporting characters: Jeremy and Claudia's parents, an annoying roommate, the corpulent potential producer of Claudia's next film. Aoki, meanwhile, plays a pivotal role but is burdened with a heavy load of temperamental artist clich s. There are lovely small moments Claudia's awkward run-in with a former student, for instance that give hope that the undeniably talented author will find her footing again after this flawed effort.
