Review by Booklist Review
A calculated first novel, balancing glitz with integrity. Lucy Greenburg, beloved only daughter of well-off Orthodox Jews, leaves her protective home to attend preppy Smith College. There she meets instant trouble--her beautiful, mysterious, rich, perpetually tan roommate Carolyn. Carolyn disappears for days at a time and won't say with whom. The two gorgeous young women fall in love with each other, and then break up over Carolyn's mogul stepfather, Ben, whose mistress Lucy becomes. What's quickly obvious to readers takes Lucy over 200 pages to find out--Ben was Carolyn's secret lover. Lucy leaves Ben, and then promptly loses her father who dies after a car crash. On one level, this is a perfect beach book, sleek and langorous with juvenile fantasies and the eroticism of wealth, glamour, and forbidden love. But behind the made-for-TV-movie facade is the real story--Lucy's indelible Jewishness and her love for her father. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A first novel with strong autobiographical overtones, this fledgling effort needed more capable editing to achieve its potential. Although Shapiro shows promise as a writer, too often she falls victim to overwrought, self-indulgent prose and a myriad of cliches. Narrator Lucy Greenburg, the blond, blue-eyed offspring of an Orthodox Jewish family that boasts a long line of revered rabbis, immediately falls under the spell of her Smith College roommate, a quintessential WASP. Carolyn Ward is beautiful, enigmatic and controlling; Lucy idolizes her finishing-school poise and perpetual tan, which Carolyn maintains by mysteriously disappearing from Smith for weeks at a time. She also awakens in Lucy a feverish sexual longing, which Lucy sublimates with a passion equally as strong--an affair with Carolyn's stepfather, construction tycoon Ben Broadhurst. Ben's influence gets Lucy a screen test, a career as a TV commercial model and her first movie. But the end of her dissolute life as Ben's mistress, a dramatic announcement by Carolyn (the ostensible plot bombshell has been telegraphed to the reader early on) and a family tragedy leave Lucy bereft of dreams, sadder but wiser at 22. Flashes of talent enliven Shapiro's often bathetic prose, especially when Lucy evokes the members of her religious family. This novel will probably fare well commercially, but one expects Shapiro to write a better book next time. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
With situations that modernize some classic themes, this first novel is a moving, heartfelt tale of family, friendship, love, and maturity. Reminiscent in some ways of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited , the novel takes Lucy Greenberg from naive adolescence to disillusioned adulthood, and leaves her in control of her life--although that life isn't exactly picture perfect. Lucy breaks from family traditions when she leaves for college, and her friendship with well-to-do Carolyn Ward throws her into a tempestuous relationship with Carolyn's stepfather, Ben. Lucy's life spirals out of control until her family is touched by tragedy; then she is forced to take control of her destiny for the first time. Just shy of being melodramatic, the novel uses powerful language and intelligent imagery to communicate Lucy's evolution. The book seems somewhat autobiographical and is very effective, although there are a few loose ends--perhaps another comment on how life can be.-- Heidi Schwartz, ``Business Interiors,'' Red Bank, N . J . (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A former actress makes her fiction debut with an intense, sophisticatedly erotic loss-of-innocence novel, suitable for reading in one steamy sitting, though a bit blurred at the core. ""Why you? Why Ben? Why any of it, Carolyn?""--these are the questions that echo off almost every page of what is really a confession from one friend, Lucy Green-burg, to another, Carolyn Ward. They meet as freshman roommates at Smith--Lucy, the daughter of a great Jewish scholar and philanthropist; and Carolyn, the fey, secretive rich girl from Connecticut, Paris, and New York. In their first semester, Carolyn disappears occasionally, returning tanned, toting suitcases filled with money, but unwilling to identify the man who's the chief player in her other life. Lucy gets help with an abortion from Carolyn and also the opportunity to meet Ben, Carolyn's stepfather, a Donald Trump type with a heart of darkness. Oddly, though, as soon as the two girls spend a sexy afternoon in bed together, Carolyn begins pushing Lucy toward Ben. Soon Lucy has dropped out of Smith to become Ben's mistress and an actress; and, later, when she runs into Carolyn on an Upper East Side street, Carolyn calls her a whore. It isn't until Lucy learns of Carolyn's attempted suicide that she finally gets Carolyn to admit that she preceded Lucy as Ben's mistress (in an affair that started when Carolyn was 14). And Lucy doesn't manage to break away from Ben until her father dies after an automobile accident. This would be much better if it weren't so patently obvious that Carolyn was Ben's first little Lolita; as it is, it's hard to buy Lucy's inability to read the many clues pointing to the ugly truth. Nonetheless, a tense and compelling first novel--one that should do a bang-up box-office business when it becomes a movie, provided it's produced with one tenth the subtlety Shapiro's brought to the writing of it. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
