The Smart One
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2.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the best-selling Girls in White Dresses (An "irresistible, pitch-perfect first novel." --Marie Claire): a gloriously funny new novel of sibling rivalry, thwarted expectations, and that place you return to when things go staggeringly awry: home.
Weezy and Will Coffey raised their children, Martha, Claire, and Max, to be kind, smart, and independent. They gave them help with their homework, a dog, and homemade birthday cakes. It's true that Martha's a little too sensitive--she calls Claire several times a week to discuss natural disasters and local crime. And Claire has a short fuse with her sister--she becomes irate when Martha suggests that the two of them attend couples therapy. And Max, the baby and a senior in college, is a little too happy-go-lucky--though not as lucky as everyone would hope. Still, their parents did their best preparing them for the world. So why, Weezy wonders, is Martha living in her childhood bedroom after a career flame-out? And why has Claire canceled her wedding and locked herself in her New York apartment? And how has Max managed to get himself into a girlfriend fiasco? A story about the ways in which we never really grow up, The Smart One is a witty, gossipy, perfectly-drawn portrait of family life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Near the end of Close's follow-up to her bestselling Girls in White Dresses, Claire thinks, "It was almost like she was right back where she'd started, but it didn't feel that way." For the reader, though, that's exactly how it feels. After ending her engagement, Claire sinks into depression, maxing out her credit cards and finally leaving New York for Philadelphia to move back in with her parents and sister, Martha, who's still working retail after a failed nursing career. Despite the finality of the breakup, Claire's mother continues to meet with caterers and florists to plan her daughter's wedding. How this will all end is clear when we first meet Claire and Martha; Close telegraphs that the way forward is to reclaim lost ground. What's surprising is that the sisters have so little fun along the way. Martha and Claire don't seem to have a genuinely kind impulse between them, and when they do finally move on, boredom is a big motivator. There are great stories to be told about families in "boomerang," but this isn't one of them.
