Trophy house /

Literary veteran Bernays' compulsively readable novel features a spectacular setting: Truro, Cape Cod. And she entwines two hot topics in the opening chapters: hate crime and the construction of hideous McMansions. But basically this is a sprightly, feminist there-is-life-after-divorce tale. Dannie is a successful children's book illustrator who, now that her daughter and son are adults, loves best to be alone at the family's Truro home with her dog and her art, while her MIT anthropology professor husband lives in Boston. But everything is thrown into turmoil when an outsider builds a monstrous beach house on which someone scrawls an anti-Semitic threat. Suddenly, Dannie is forced to recognize that her marriage has gone cold, just as her daughter realizes that she, too, is in a moribund relationship. Bernays quickly drops any pretense of insights into conspicuous consumption and prejudice, and goes full throttle for a stereotypical women's fiction story line, which she executes with panache, a genuine feel for natural beauty and class conflicts, and an understanding of how smothering marriage can be. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist

Is there an impulse stronger than lust-real estate lust, that is-for the comfortably middle-aged? Maybe not, teases Bernays (Professor Romeo, etc.) in this astute, witty romance, beguilingly set in the Cape Cod towns of Truro and Provincetown. Dannie Faber, a successful illustrator of children's books, is so attached to her beach house that she lives there April to November-even though she's frequently separated from husband Tom, a "gentle and distracted" MIT professor. It's a year after 9/11, and Dannie's Truro house has become a haven in a world where "civilization had cracked, setting people and events off in wild spinning." But then crass hotelier Mitch Brenner constructs a "monster house" distressingly nearby-and somebody writes "Jew Pig" in red paint (or is it blood?) on his front door. As Dannie and best friend Raymie speculate about the wrongdoer, readers may expect the plot to focus on the crime. But Bernays switches gears: Dannie turns inward as her marriage falls apart and she begins an affair with her New York editor; floundering daughter Beth moves back home; and Brenner makes a surprising alliance with Raymie. Though the plot is a bit untidy, readers will bond with Bernays's prickly, opinionated, bighearted heroine. Agent, Sterling Lord. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In Bernays's (Professor Romeo) new novel, unexpected events throw a successful children's book illustrator's perfect life into turmoil. Dannie Faber divides her time between Boston and Truro, on Cape Cod. When the novel opens, she is working on her latest project in her beachfront neighborhood. Meanwhile, a wealthy new neighbor is building an ostentatious home, the first topic to inspire gossip since the murder of a young mother the year before. Dannie and her friends lament the loss of the more artistic kind in Truro: "Where have all the artists gone?" Dannie's friend Raymie asks. Where indeed? To the locals, the "trophy house," the matching trophy wife, and the purebred dog are signs that the only requirement for home ownership has become a disposable income. Gossip turns into action when Raymie begins to fall for the new homeowner, Dannie's husband moves out and her daughter moves in, and Dannie herself begins an illicit affair with a publisher. With poignancy and humor, Bernays turns her pen toward questions of character and fate and offers readers a portrait of how a marriage either prospers-or ends. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/04.]-Nanci Milone Hill, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A tart social novel from veteran Bernays (Professor Romeo, 1989, etc.). On the Wednesday after Labor Day of 2002, children's-book illustrator Dannie Faber is gossiping with best friend Raymie, who runs a B&B in Provincetown, about the rude rich people overrunning Cape Cod. The one who jumped the line at a popular local restaurant by bribing the waiter turns out to be the same hotel gazillionaire who's built a huge, vulgar trophy house down the beach from Dannie in Truro. It's the one-year anniversary of September 11, an event that quietly haunts Dannie; she's also slightly concerned about the slow asphyxiation of her marriage to MIT professor Tom Faber and about the arrival of daughter Beth, dumped by a live-in boyfriend. Dannie tries to be supportive, but she never thought much of egotistical Andy, and she wishes 29-year-old Beth would grow up and quit being so needy. Though we view the action through Dannie's eyes, readers come to realize that this workaholic, emotionally skittish and often judgmental woman does not always accurately convey what's going on. Bernays depicts with extra-dry humor the Faber marriage, which has long since exhausted its reasons for being, and Raymie's surprise hookup with the crass trophy-house owner, Mitchell Brenner, who proves to be not (quite) as awful as he first seemed. Sharp-tongued Dannie might grow annoying as a narrator if she weren't so smart and frequently so funny about social and sexual tensions on the Cape, in academia and in a middle-aged affair. New York publisher David is sexy, adoring and practically perfect--but Dannie manages to find a few things wrong with him anyway. By the end of the story, she's pushed him into the same kind of part-time relationship she had with her now-ex-husband. It becomes clear that Dannie loves Truro and her solitary creative life at least as much as she does her family and friends. Elegantly readable and sardonically perceptive: literary fiction that doesn't put on airs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.