This Side of Married
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Intelligent, crisp, ironic, and well-paced, This Side of Married brings to mind a pleasing cross of Jane Austen and Laurie Colwin. It is a sparkling domestic novel of romantic love and familial loyalties that is as heady as a glass of good champagne and as deliciously pleasurable as an authentic Sacher torte.
This Side of Married introduces the Rubin girls—three eligible sisters in an affluent family in a comfortable Philadelphia suburb, dominated by a strong-willed matriarch whose defining wish is to see each of them well-married.
One daughter, Isabel, already is, although less than happily; a second, Alice, is about to tumble head over heels into a speedy engagement; the third and youngest, Tina, is blithely and resolutely single, though always dreaming of the perfect wedding to come.
As various men enter from the wings, the daughters’ lives are thrown into unexpected upheaval—from Theo, Isabel’s lawyer husband, who is hardly the idealistic young man he once was; to Anthony Wolf, the promising cardiologist to whom Dr. Rubin, the girls’ mother, introduces Alice; to his friend, Simon Goldenstern, Anthony’s sardonic journalist friend who does everything in his power to protect the girls from the big bad wolf; to the unlikely cousin who turns up, Soren Zank, an environmentalist who made his first fortune in Silicon Valley, and who becomes the comic relief in this smartly observed and richly satisfying contemporary comedy of manners.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The venerable Jane Austen would no doubt be astonished to find herself compared via back cover copy to the author of this dreary, plodding tale of matrimony and mishegas in modern-day Philadelphia. Dr. Evelyn Rubin became a doctor at a time when women simply didn't become doctors, but in her 60s, her only source of pleasure is getting her own daughters safely married off. She's succeeded with the middle child, Isabel, who hasn't been able to get her husband to impregnate her; but her bitter disappointments are goody-goody Alice, the eldest, 38, and woefully single, and wild-child Tina, the youngest, who subscribes to the blow-and-throw disposable-man school of dating. Men of varying degrees of suitability wander in and out of the story, upsetting the lives of our three heroines in various ways. Unfortunately, neither the men nor the ensuing turmoil are interesting enough to sustain readers' interest. Sedate to the point of colorlessness ("Still, she did not actually broach the subject with him but asked instead, 'So, when did you first become interested in me?' "), this is an excellent lesson in the difference between going through the motions and pulling out the stops; the ranks of wedding lit won't be improved by this addition. 4-city author tour.
