Finished 3-14-11, rating 3/5, fiction, 353 pages, pub. 2010

Panic seized him.  He wasn’t prepared.  He had nothing to suggest.

He hung up.

In the quiet his emotions drifted from disgust to depression.  There was, however, no escape from his behavior, his acting like a lovesick teenager, not a person who uses his mind for a living, and he wondered if he had lost through nonuse what others had, the ability to communicate on a personal, even intimate, level.

page 45

Norm Armstein is a very successful corporate lawyer who has always been in love with his sister-in-law, if only his thick-headed brother hadn’t found her first they may have enjoyed a very happy life together.  After his last ill-fated trip back home to Isaactown, and Bev, he believes he sees her walking in Manhattan and follows her.  Only it’s not her, but a younger woman who befriends him.  Norm’s job is like a noose hanging around his neck and Harriet and her daughter are much-needed in his life.

Norm is like many who are lucky enough to have high paying jobs and not enough time to enjoy the fruits of his labor.  His attraction to Bev has colored his dating life for over 20 years and he has never truly been in love.  So, the story is about Norm finding a life in his middle age and how that life might fit in with a girlfriend and her daughter.

The story itself was good, but it was a slow read.  It had a lot of detail that really slowed the whole story down to a crawl, but that may have been purposeful, since the story was introspective.  As much as I enjoyed the idea of Norm’s story I found it hard to really care about him and even Harriet.  At first I felt for Bev and the life she chose/got stuck in, but in the end I didn’t care for her character either.  Solid writing and story, just not the story for me.

This was generously sent to me by the author.