Rainbow Rowell's Attachments is a perfectly entertaining novel — light, breezy, funny, and observant. Jennifer and Beth, two young women who work in the newsroom of a small-city newspaper in the Midwest, use their employer's internal email system to exchange messages about their love lives. Jennifer's husband wants a child; she doesn't. Beth's live-in boyfriend is a rock musician who resists making any commitment to her. Beth and Jennifer are unaware that their messages are being read by Lincoln, a lonely guy newly hired in the IT department, charged by his boss with monitoring employees' use of the computer system for personal emails, porn, etc. Lincoln can't bring himself to shut down the constant exchanges between the two women, in part because Beth's emails reveal her to be so sweet of heart and he also discovers that she thinks he's attractive. Sounds sort of moronic, I know, but in Rowell's capable hands, the story moves along at a good clip, and the emails that zip back and forth between Beth and Jennifer are very witty. Good beach reading, at the very least. ★★★★☆
Last Sunday I read two reviews of Jean Thompson's new novel, The Year We Left Home — this one in the New York Times, and this short take in the Boston Globe. The reviewers' comments made it seem like a book I'd enjoy a lot. Thompson writes well, but I got over 200 pages into this 325-page book and decided to drop it because I just didn't care enough about any of the characters. Maybe you'll have more luck with it. ★☆☆☆☆
To be fair, it's possible that it's my mood, not Thompson's characters, responsible for my unwillingness to stick with her story. I say this because the same thing happened this week with my third (!) effort to get into Ann Tyler's Back When We Were Grownups. Tyler is one of our finest novelists, and I usually thoroughly enjoy her quirky characters and slowly unwinding narratives. But after 70 or 80 pages, I still haven't found any of her characters interesting in this one. I'll give it one more try soon.
Sarah Pekkanen's Skipping a Beat looks like chick-lit, but it's not. Here's Booklist's synopsis: "High-school sweethearts Julia and Michael have left their humble West Virginia roots far behind for a glamorous life in Washington, D.C. As they achieve more in their careers—she as a high-end events planner, he as the CEO of his own sports-drink company—they lose themselves as a couple. After Michael has a near-death experience, he decides to give away all their wealth and focus on his relationship with Julia. But she’s not ready to forgive him for choosing his work over her when she needed him most. Pekkanen’s novel traces the couple’s attempts to make amends for allowing success to replace love." Good characters here — and a tender and insightful story. ★★★☆☆
Sense and Nonsense 