Echoes of the maternal
Things I Want My Daughters to Know
By Elizabeth Noble
Morrow, 374 pp., $22.95
Fear and Yoga in New Jersey
By Debra Galant
St. Martin's, 256 pp., $23.95
Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige
By Kathleen Gilles Seidel
St. Martin's, 278 pp., $22.95
Women in Hats
By Judy Sheehan
Ballantine, 336 pp., paperback, $14
Mothers - good, bad, and otherwise - figure in this month's "Pop Lit" choices.
British author Elizabeth Noble's "Things I Want My Daughters to Know" is an unusually good family novel, a three-hankie weepie with a bittersweet edge. Loving, irreverent Barbara Forbes dies of cancer at age 60, leaving letters of advice for each of her four daughters. She also leaves her journal, which reveals aspects of her life none of her daughters knew. In the year following her death they wrestle with grief and try to get on with their lives, guided by Barbara's infectious humor and hard-won wisdom. Lisa, the eldest, can't commit to marrying her long-term boyfriend, Andy. Jennifer's marriage to Stephen frays as she faces the possibility that she may be infertile. Globe-trotting Amanda is stunned and angered by a revelation about her own paternity in her mother's journal. And 15-year-old Hannah, the daughter of Barbara's happy second marriage to Mark, seesaws uncertainly between childhood and adulthood as she tries to comfort her grieving father and test her independence. Noble is a supple storyteller who moves easily through time and among many points of view. Her characters are familiar and sympathetic, flaws and all. Barbara's smart, funny, sensible voice rescues this story from cliché and sentimentality.
Debra Galant has a real gift for social satire. In "Fear and Yoga in New Jersey," her second novel after the very funny "Rattled," Galant again skewers suburbia. Yoga teacher Nina Gettleman-Summer - Unitarian, vegetarian, "good citizen of Mother Earth" - takes antidepressants, resents her affluent students, and worries that she's a fake, "not the Prius-driving, aluminum-recycling vegetarian she really was, but a forty-six-year-old Jewish American Princess." Nina is not having a good day. At approximately the same time her new tranquillity fountain floods her yoga studio, her husband, Michael, is laid off, his job as a meteorologist outsourced to the Philippines. Nina's parents, Belle and Max, fly north separately to escape a Florida hurricane. The ornery Belle arrives safely at the Gettleman-Summer residence, reeking of marijuana thanks to a Rastafarian cab driver. But Max ends up at Logan Airport with no luggage, no wallet, no ID. He's mistaken for a homeless person and taken into custody. Michael, studying cloud formations in the Newark Airport parking lot, comes under Homeland Security surveillance. The Gettleman-Summers' problems keep piling up, a string of madcap troubles, hilariously described, that may make readers forget that this novel doesn't have much of a plot.
"Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige," traditional advice to the mother of the bridegroom, isn't practical when your role in the wedding has been usurped by your ex-husband's pushy girlfriend. Kathleen Gilles Seidel's entertaining novel sheds light on yet another dark side of wedding planning. Darcy Van Aiken's husband, Mike, leaves her, citing, among many failings, her inability to organize his sock drawer. Darcy, who narrates her story, is a meticulous ICU nurse who can't seem to apply her organizational skills to the home front. Talk therapy and Ritalin turn her into a model organized mother. When older son Jeremy announces his engagement to Cami Zander-Brown, Darcy is prepared to swing into action. But before she can start planning the engagement party, Mike's new girlfriend, Claudia, has everything in hand, down to the last centerpiece. Claudia, a professional designer and "sewing consultant," has a beautiful house, the perfect setting for a formal dinner for 80. Darcy discovers that Claudia also has a website on which she catalogs every detail of the party preparations. How will this sit with the bride's wealthy family? Will anyone notice that the bridegroom's mother hasn't been invited to the engagement party? As the wedding plans escalate, a crisis tests Claudia's character, and Darcy shows her mettle.
A different sort of mother takes the stage in Judy Sheehan's engaging but overstuffed mother-daughter face-off, "Women in Hats." Faded Hollywood legend Bridie Hart, star of the long-running sitcom "Mother Love," remains America's favorite TV mom, beloved by everyone with the notable exception of her own daughter, ambitious New York theater director Leigh Majors. When Leigh's dentist husband, Michael, writes a promising play, "Women in Hats," based on his own family, as a gift for Leigh to direct, Bridie insists on being cast in the starring role. Michael thinks Bridie is just the ticket to make his play a Broadway success. Leigh, who has spent her adult life trying to distance herself from Bridie, is far from happy at the prospect of directing the mother whose heavy drinking, multiple marriages, and incorrigible egomania made her childhood miserable. True to form, Bridie attempts to take control of the play. Sheehan, a playwright as well as a novelist, works mightily to round out Leigh's character. There are story lines about her fragile marriage; her infertility; her longing for a child; her attraction to her stage manager, James; her close relationship with artist friend Maddie; her enduring love for her late sister, Lilly. But for all the amusing horror stories about Bridie's legendary antics, she never seems to transcend the caricature of a selfish, overbearing mother, even when she mourns the lost Lilly: "She wanted to be like me. She loved me. At least one of my daughters loved me."
Diane White writes every month about new light and popular fiction. 