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Synopsis:

The author of "Hanging Up" brings her heart and humor to the story of a woman's attempt to deal with passion, guilt, murder, and motherhood.

Description:

"Compassionate, funny, and tremendously satisfying," was The New York Times Book Review's description of Delia Ephron's first novel, Hanging Up. In her new book, she brings her heart and humor to the story of a woman's attempt to deal with passion, guilt, murder, and motherhood.

In a state of near panic because of the nighttime activities of her teenage son, Lily Davis decides to uproot herself and Sam from Manhattan to Sakonnet Bay, a small Long Island town, where presumably the opportunities for trouble and grief are less available. She becomes a reporter for the weekly paper, Sam enrolls in high school, and for at least a few weeks life proceeds as expected. Then, through unexpected and unnerving circumstances, she spies a naked woman asleep in a summer house. And everything changes. There is a murder. Or is there? And there is a man. But he is married, and Lily is filled with guilt-about her own divorce. Friendship and love relationships unravel, or threaten to. Are people and events as they seem, or is Lily just perceiving her small town through big-city eyes?

"Gentle humor and deadpan observation," said The Boston Globe of Hanging Up. "Ephron handles her characters with a deft, delicate touch." Delia Ephron has become known for her subtle ability to mix wit and sensitivity. In this book, she outdoes herself, with quirky Lily Davis, a big-city woman attempting to make sense of small-town life.

From Publishers Weekly

Ephron is best known for her screenwriting work (Sleepless in Seattle; You've Got Mail), but her talent for witty dialogue flourishes in her second novel (after Hanging Up), set in Sakonnet Bay, Long Island, where freelance reporter and single mom Lily Davis moves from Manhattan with her 15-year-old son, Sam. Lily decided to move to the small town when she realized Sam was sneaking out to nightclubs and hiding a knife in his bureau drawer, but her efforts to give him safe harbor are thwarted by his sullen rebelliousness and his Klingon-speaking girlfriend, Deidre. An inveterate New Yorker, Lily is uncomfortable in the cozy, gossipy town and fearful of almost everything. Do the deer grazing on her front lawn have rabies? Are Sam's antisocial tendencies and dreadful haircut "normal range behavior"? Has she become the town joke for insulting police Sgt. Tom McKee during an incident involving a dog whose head got stuck in a pitcher? Soon Lily has serious issues to worry about, such as the naked woman--dead, drugged or sleeping--she and Tom discover in a supposedly empty house. When the woman's body is later found after having been haphazardly buried by someone in a swampy area, Lily starts sleuthing to find out what happened. Not only does this investigation reveal a less than idyllic side to Sakonnet Bay, it also forces her to confront disturbing truths about her son, her divorce and her growing feelings for the married Tom. Despite billing herself as an "irritating," liberated city woman, Lily tends to musings about family and divorce that reveal Ephron's moral to the story: divorce can be confusing and painful for kids, but a loving parent can still keep her child on track. Lily learns she can't safeguard her son merely by shielding him from big-city dangers. The road to this hard-earned lesson takes the reader through a novel that sparkles with lively characters.

Book Dimension

Height (mm) 237 　　　　　　　　　Width (mm) 161