Book Roundup
Yvonne Zipp welcomes back a lost novelist, ponders the death of chick lit, and giggles over a teen comedy by a writer for 'The Simpsons.'
By Yvonne Zippfrom the June 8, 2007 edition
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Consequences, by Penelope Lively (Viking)
Penelope Lively's 17th novel follows three generations of British women from the 1930s to the present. Lorna and Matt meet on a park bench, fall in love, and move to an unheated cottage in the country, where Lorna gleefully abandons her upper-class helplessness and learns to garden, use an outside privy, and pluck chickens. Matt, meanwhile, begins building a reputation as a wood engraver, until World War II intervenes. Twenty years later, their daughter, Molly, happens on an ad in a newspaper someone left on a bus, leading to a library job and an affair with a wealthy man. In the present-day, Molly's daughter Ruth, a journalist, starts seeking out her grandparents' past. "Consequences" is a well-done, emotionally thoughtful novel, hampered slightly by the fact that each succeeding generation is less interesting than the one that came before. Grade: B+
Death by Chick Lit, by Lynn Harris (Berkley)
Someone's bumping off bestselling writers of chick lit, and Lola Somerville is frankly a little miffed that she's not successful enough to attract the killer's attention. Lynn Harris's comic mystery defends the maligned genre at the same time she sends up its conventions. (The first victim became famous after a letter to the editor defending the stock gay best friend character was optioned and became her novel, "The Gay Best Friend.") But those of us who enjoy the occasional light comic novel will welcome her response to the assorted "stern reviewers and opinion writers" who decry the genre as "bad for women" – "a charge … that implied, condescendingly, that women can't tell the difference between instruction manuals and entertainment." But after a strong beginning, Harris's story falls prey to a few of the pitfalls common to the pastel-cover set. For example, Lola is so self-centered she can't manage any sympathy for the dead writers (some of whom were friends), and the mystery itself is slackly plotted. Grade: B–
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