True Enough
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Object of My Affection comes a warm and witty family drama about love and lust, trust and betrayal, commitment and denial.
Jane Cody keeps lists. After all, how else would she keep track of her life—her job producing a Boston TV show; her amiable but frankly dull second husband; and her precocious six-year-old son who “doesn't do small talk” but loves to bake. And as if that weren't enough she has an acid-tongued mother-in-law living in her barn, an arthritic malamute lodger to walk, and a dangerously seductive ex-husband on the scene.
In New York, Desmond Sullivan is fretting that his five-year relationship with smart, sweet Russell is too monogamous and settled. Perhaps a spell as writer-in-residence at Deerforth College will cure that, and also allow him to finish his biography of one of the 'sixties greatest forgotten mediocrities, torch singer Pauline Anderton? When Jane and Desmond meet in Boston, they embark on a TV documentary about the elusive Anderton, which is to take them on a journey of self-discovery in which they learn as much about their own secrets and lies than they ever wanted to know.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
However insightful, this fourth novel (following The Man of the House) dissecting the self-centered, shallow social artifice and snobbery of the great American middle class fails by a whisper to achieve the exquisitely fine-edged satirical tone that distinguished the author's brilliant earlier work. In the case of literature remarkable for its droll voice and delightfully empathetic characters, any shortcoming (however infinitesimal) is tantamount to discovering a zircon in a Tiffany setting. At 40, Jane Cody, a fading Boston public TV producer, frets as her long-running TV talk show loses viewers. She and her precocious, belligerent six-year-old son are both secretly in therapy, and her rebound marriage to a bland professor at a small liberal arts college has lost its zest. When her best friend who married Jane's sexy, womanizing first husband asks Jane to confront her ex with the friend's suspicion he is cheating, Jane gives in to her rekindled attraction to the ex and enters into an affair. Meanwhile, obscure NYC biographer Desmond Sullivan, suffering writer's block and a restless discontent with his five-year monogamous cohabitation with his gay lover, is looking forward to a much-needed, soul-searching sabbatical provided by a semester teaching in Boston with Jane's spouse. Each seeking salvation by collaborating on a TV biography of a minor, long-forgotten pop singer of the '60s, Jane and Desmond travel to a seedy seaside town on the Florida panhandle for taping just before a late season tropical storm is due. A not-so-surprising turn of events provides an equally predictable resolution. Loyal readers will miss the dead-on timing of McCauley's earlier novels. His insight into the small self-delusions that support satisfied lives is, however, as sharp as ever.
