There are two magazine columnists that I always look forward to reading; Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly and Anna Quindlen in Newsweek. Both are fiction writers as well, and while I don't read King's fiction too often, I never miss a book by Quindlen.
Her newest novel is called “Rise and Shine,” which is also the name of a popular television network morning news show, hosted by a 40-something Meghan Fitzmaurice, who bears a resemblance to Katie Couric. Meghan is smart, super-efficient, always ready to help a worthy charitable cause, beloved by millions and a bit caustic with her family and closest friends.
Meghan's younger sister is Bridget, a social worker in the poorest section of the Bronx. Meghan mingles with the powerful and beautiful crowd, is married to her high-school sweetheart, Evan, and is mom to college bound son Leo. Bridget spends her days with women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder: poor, with few work skills, many with young children and no husband or a husband who beats them. Bridget steers them through the maze of governmental bureaucracy and teaches a parenting class, although she is not a parent herself.
Bridget has never married, but she is involved with a gruff, no-nonsense police spokesman, 20 years her senior, Irving Lefkowitz. Meghan does not understand why her sister is with this course man.
The sisters are very close, having lost their parents at a young age in a car accident. Bridget is a second mom to nephew Leo, attending all of the parent functions that Meghan missed due to work obligations.
Things are going well in Meghan's life; she attends a fundraiser for Bridget's organization, which raises much needed funds for a good cause.
Then one morning, it all falls apart. After a contentious interview with an obnoxious billionaire business mogul and his new wife, (the woman he left his first wife for who is the woman they hired to be a surrogate mother for their baby; now the new couple are locked in a custody battle with wife number one), Meghan utters an obscenity under her breath directed at the man. She believes her microphone has been shut off, but her words were heard by everyone watching television.
Bridget doesn't know what has happened and finds out while at a dinner party. In this tabloid age, it is all everyone is talking about. She tries desperately to find her sister to no avail. Meghan's husband, Evan, whom Bridget adores as an older brother, comes to see her at work. He tells Bridget that before Meghan went to work that fateful day, he told her he was leaving her.
She tracks Meghan down and they talk. Usually Meghan is the stronger sister, the one with all of the answers, the one who takes care of everything. This time, Meghan has no answers. She was scheduled for a vacation with her husband in Jamaica, and Bridget talks her into going on vacation alone. Hopefully, the media storm will blow over by the time she gets back.
But Meghan doesn't come back. She ends up at a quiet, private retreat owned by a widowed businessman. Bridget goes there to talk to her sister, and they spend a week together, hashing through their lives together. The relationship between the sisters is complicated and feels very real.
“Rise and Shine” is more than a story of two sisters. It is also a story of two New York Cities; the wealthy, glamorous, fabulous, phony one that Meghan inhabits and the gritty, dirty, sad and hard one that Bridget works in. Quindlen shows the reader what the impoverished people of New York have to deal with on a daily basis.
She describes the hard plastic chairs that populate all the waiting rooms that poor people spend their time in and how people displaced from their homes must find other families to live with. When it becomes too overcrowded, the family has to find another place to move yet again.
Bridget's assistant, a tough woman named Tequila, struggles mightily to raise her sons and daughter in a dangerous public housing complex. Her daughter, Margaret, is a highly intelligent girl, with aspirations at an Ivy League college education. Everything Tequila does is with the goal of keeping Margaret on track for a good education. She knows that is her daughter's only way out.
Quindlen is an exquisite writer. She writes sentences that can take your breath away or make you think of the world in a different way. When Bridget tells the aunt that raised her that Meghan is always so confident of herself and that it is not a facade, Aunt Maureen says, “Sometimes the facade becomes the building. Sometimes we just wind up doing the kinds of things of which we are capable, whether we like them or not.”
The story has some big surprises in store for the characters at the end; some good, some bad.
It's kind of like how life really is. “Rise and Shine” is another good novel in the Anna Quindlen fictional collection. I give it four stars.
Auburn native Diane La Rue's
life-long goal is to read a book a week. If you have suggestions, e-mail her at laruedine2000@yahoo.com
Meghan's younger sister is Bridget, a social worker in the poorest section of the Bronx. Meghan mingles with the powerful and beautiful crowd, is married to her high-school sweetheart, Evan, and is mom to college bound son Leo. Bridget spends her days with women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder: poor, with few work skills, many with young children and no husband or a husband who beats them. Bridget steers them through the maze of governmental bureaucracy and teaches a parenting class, although she is not a parent herself.
Bridget has never married, but she is involved with a gruff, no-nonsense police spokesman, 20 years her senior, Irving Lefkowitz. Meghan does not understand why her sister is with this course man.
The sisters are very close, having lost their parents at a young age in a car accident. Bridget is a second mom to nephew Leo, attending all of the parent functions that Meghan missed due to work obligations.
Things are going well in Meghan's life; she attends a fundraiser for Bridget's organization, which raises much needed funds for a good cause.
Then one morning, it all falls apart. After a contentious interview with an obnoxious billionaire business mogul and his new wife, (the woman he left his first wife for who is the woman they hired to be a surrogate mother for their baby; now the new couple are locked in a custody battle with wife number one), Meghan utters an obscenity under her breath directed at the man. She believes her microphone has been shut off, but her words were heard by everyone watching television.
Bridget doesn't know what has happened and finds out while at a dinner party. In this tabloid age, it is all everyone is talking about. She tries desperately to find her sister to no avail. Meghan's husband, Evan, whom Bridget adores as an older brother, comes to see her at work. He tells Bridget that before Meghan went to work that fateful day, he told her he was leaving her.
She tracks Meghan down and they talk. Usually Meghan is the stronger sister, the one with all of the answers, the one who takes care of everything. This time, Meghan has no answers. She was scheduled for a vacation with her husband in Jamaica, and Bridget talks her into going on vacation alone. Hopefully, the media storm will blow over by the time she gets back.
But Meghan doesn't come back. She ends up at a quiet, private retreat owned by a widowed businessman. Bridget goes there to talk to her sister, and they spend a week together, hashing through their lives together. The relationship between the sisters is complicated and feels very real.
“Rise and Shine” is more than a story of two sisters. It is also a story of two New York Cities; the wealthy, glamorous, fabulous, phony one that Meghan inhabits and the gritty, dirty, sad and hard one that Bridget works in. Quindlen shows the reader what the impoverished people of New York have to deal with on a daily basis.
She describes the hard plastic chairs that populate all the waiting rooms that poor people spend their time in and how people displaced from their homes must find other families to live with. When it becomes too overcrowded, the family has to find another place to move yet again.
Bridget's assistant, a tough woman named Tequila, struggles mightily to raise her sons and daughter in a dangerous public housing complex. Her daughter, Margaret, is a highly intelligent girl, with aspirations at an Ivy League college education. Everything Tequila does is with the goal of keeping Margaret on track for a good education. She knows that is her daughter's only way out.
Quindlen is an exquisite writer. She writes sentences that can take your breath away or make you think of the world in a different way. When Bridget tells the aunt that raised her that Meghan is always so confident of herself and that it is not a facade, Aunt Maureen says, “Sometimes the facade becomes the building. Sometimes we just wind up doing the kinds of things of which we are capable, whether we like them or not.”
The story has some big surprises in store for the characters at the end; some good, some bad.
It's kind of like how life really is. “Rise and Shine” is another good novel in the Anna Quindlen fictional collection. I give it four stars.
Auburn native Diane La Rue's
life-long goal is to read a book a week. If you have suggestions, e-mail her at laruedine2000@yahoo.com
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