Emma's Table
A Novel
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
From the moment Emma Sutton walks into the esteemed FitzCoopers auction house, the one-time media darling knows exactly what she wants: an exquisite antique dining table. What she doesn't realize is what she's getting: the chance to set things right.
Fresh from a year-long stretch in prison and the public bloodletting that accompanied her fall, Emma needs a clean slate. She finds her life just as she left it, filled with glittering business successes and bruising personal defeats—rolling television cameras and chauffeured limousines, followed by awkward Sunday dinners at home. She knows, deep down, that she needs a change, though she can't imagine where it might come from or where it will lead.
Enter Benjamin Blackman, a terminally charming social worker who moonlights for Emma on the weekends, and Gracie Santiago, an overweight little girl from Queens, one of Benjamin's most heartbreaking wards. Together with an eclectic supporting cast—including Emma's prodigal ex-husband, a bossy yoga teacher, and a tiny Japanese diplomat—the unlikely trio is whisked into a fleet-footed story of unforeseen circumstance and delicious opportunity, as their solitary searching for better paths leads them all, however improbably, straight to Park Avenue and the dynamic woman at the novel's center.
Sophisticated yet accessible, lighthearted but also telling, Emma's Table is a thoroughly winning and surprisingly affecting tale of second chances.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this solid ripped-from-the-headlines effort from Galanes (Father's Day), Emma Sutton once an Oprah-featured interior design queen, now a newly released convicted tax felon is determined to regain her balance, personally and professionally. Yet she soon resorts to mild fraud at an auction, proving old habits die hard. Confrontations with her ex-husband (who wants to try again) and her adult daughter (a mass of insecurities and vices) lead to guilt and shame. Meanwhile, Emma's weekend assistant, Benjamin Blackman, is not coping very well with his girlfriend or with his day job as an elementary school social worker. There a troubled, overweight third grader, Gracie Santiago, is losing ground fast, despite her mother's efforts. When Emma decides that she has brought her woes upon herself and can get rid of them the same way, the story lines collide neatly. Galanes's thoughtful, placid novel is overpopulated given the scarcity of plot, but the mother-daughter relationships hold it together.
