Here are some customer reviews of
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
:
I honestly cannot understand the glowing reviews I have thus far read of this truly lackluster and predictable fare delivered from a rather uncreative, predictable, author who just can't seem to deal with the fact that she ditched her Harvard Law education to raise kids by her Pulitizer prize winning husband. Yet everywhere I turn, there it is--another favorable review for this unimaginative dud.
This over-wrought domestic drama with an immature protagonist who is just not likeable, and her SIDS baby, bratty step child, Central Park privlege and on and on-- I mean, really, Jane Austen knew better. So did other great women writers who --though some may have been mothers themselves--knew that they had to be the real thing or get out of the game. I'm sorry, but literary posterity is not going to give a darn about Ayelet's second rate house-hold dramas.
But, of course, the privleged Ms. Waldman wants it both ways. Well, talent isn't sprouted from a Harvard law degree or off the glowy aura of writer, hubby.
You don't have it, Ms. Waldman.
Give it up!
Please wise up and return to the law!
There are so many better women writers out there who probably aren't given the glowing reviews, the top-shelf treatment as you--for shame! You have no gift in you.
21st century "you-can-have-it-all", Waldman eerily reminds me more of a throwback to Betty Friedan's frustrated, over-educated 50's housewife. I can't help but detect an undertone of panic beneath her prose as if she is literally trying to save herself from the horrors of domestic drudgery.
Unfortunately, with this sorry domestic tale she's dragging "us" readers down with her.
 Not to rain on anyone's parade here--with all these beaucoup glowing reviews--but I was bored stiff with this one. There was absolutely nothing unique or refreshing about this read. The characters seemed flat, lifeless, and not very likable. And I just could not see anything redeeming or noteworthy about the story. In fact, it's no more than mere domestic drama at its worst!
The main character whines and moans her way through. She comes off narcissistic and even the step-child she tries to embrace is unlikable. Ultimately, though, there is no literature here. I am assuming this is the goal of the author, but there is better material to be had on the Lifetime channel.
I have to say, for my reading time, I need quality works written by writers who have more going for them than what I see here.
It takes a special lack of talent to create a character who has suffered one of the most devastating losses a person can experience, and yet provokes no sympathy whatsoever in the reader. Ayelet Waldman manages this dubious accomplishment in "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits."
Emilia Greenleaf has just lost her newborn to SIDS and is supposedly trying to overcome this tragedy. Yet the only real focus of Emilia seems to be her husband (whom she adores with a blind devotion that borders on obsession and would more appropriate in a teenager) and, mainly, herself. Emilia is narcissistic, shallow and annoying to an extreme that makes you want to shake her and tell her to get over herself.
Emilia is forced to act as a stepmother for a five-year old boy, who is a caricature of a character (as are her father, mother, friend and pretty much everyone in the book): a precocious and brilliant child who says things like "so it is." He must endure Emilia, who feeds him a banana split even though he's lactose intolerant, and falls in a lake while she's taking care of him. Why? Emilia justifies all her actions, but the truth is she's simply too self-absorbed to put a child's needs ahead of her own.
The only reason I finished reading this book was because I wanted to see what Emilia would do to the poor kid. It wouldn't have surprised me if she had killed him through sheer negligence, but, alas, Waldman concocts an idiotic and unbelievable happy ending, which left me wondering whether she's trying to channel Danielle Steel or Judith Krantz. Unfortunately for the reader of "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," even trashy novels are way out of Waldman's league.
 Once again Ayelet Waldman has a winner. I fell in love with her writing styles when she was doing her Mommy Track Series. Then when I read Daughters Keeper I new she was not just a "beach read" writer. Now with Love and Impossible Pursuits she will have you laughing on one page and crying on the next. Great great read!!!
I read this book in one sitting, I was so involved with the characters and the story. I read all of Ms. Waldman's Mommy Track Mystery books, but of course this is a totally different genre and type of book.
Ms. Waldman is a wonderful writer, I just sat back, and wrapped myslef up in her words. I shed a few tears, laughed out loud and just forgot about everything else until I could finish this book.
When I put it down, I found myself thinking and thinking about the characters, I just wasn't ready to let them go. Especially William!
Thank-you to Ms. Waldeman for an afternoon's experience with a book, one that I havn't had in a very long time.
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