Prospect Park West
A Novel
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3.6 • 24 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In Amy Sohn’s smart, sexy, satirical peek into the bedrooms and hearts of Prospect Park West, the lives of four women come together during one long, hot Brooklyn summer.
In the park, at the coffee shops, and on the playgrounds of the neighborhood, four women’s lives collide during a hot summer in Brooklyn. The lives of these four Brooklynite women look basic on the outside—but inside, each woman feels a building frustration with life that could burst any second.
Frustrated Academy Award–winning actress Melora Leigh, eager to relieve the pressures of raising her adopted toddler, feels the seductive pull of kleptomania; Rebecca Rose, missing her formerly robust sex life of her pre-motherhood days, begins a dangerous flirtation with handsome neighborhood celebrity; Lizzi O’Donnell, a so-called “former” lesbian, wonders why she is still drawn to women despite her sexy husband and adorable baby; and Karen Bryan Shapiro consumes herself with a powerful obsession that is sure to complete her perfect life—snagging the ultimate three-bedroom apartment in a well-maintained, P.S. 321–zoned co-op building.
As the women’s paths intertwined (and sometimes collide), each must struggle to keep her man, her sanity...and her playdates.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former New York magazine "Mating" columnist Sohn zeroes in on the more-fertile-than-thou crowd in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood in her vinegary latest (after My Old Man). Like a Grand Hotel for the yuppie set, the lives of moody, angry, dissatisfied mommies intersect on the playgrounds and co-ops of their overpriced hood. Among them, Lizzie, whose lesbian proclivities mask her loneliness; Rebecca, whose libidoless spouse prefers his role as dad over husband; Karen, a social-climbing conniver; and Melora, a former Manhattanite whose psychiatric maladies are as pathetic as they are numerous. The gals in this comedy of bad manners are burned out, bitchy and beyond salvation as they maneuver to be noticed and loved. Meanwhile, there's more name-dropping than in an edition of Page Six, and while Sohn is obviously intent on skewering the annoying urban mommy stereotype, 400 pages is a stretch for material that's been blogged to death. There are moments of brutal honesty, but they're far too few to allow readers to muster an ounce of sympathy for a crew of caricatures so broadly drawn and sadly conceived.
Customer Reviews
Ouch!
So sorry that Amy Sohn's experiences as a mother in Brooklyn have left her so battle-scarred and bitter that she needs to pick on whole categories of women just to get a cheap laugh in her book. Her reference to big women and the alleged size of the anatomy of the men who love them was just another sad example of women bashing other women for no reason. I'm a proud BBW, not a mother of anyone, and will refrain from criticizing any groups of women, mothers or otherwise. I will save my criticism for individual authors, like this one, who choose not to do the same. I wish I could get my money back from iTunes. Needless to say, I'm not even going to bother finishing the book now.