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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
This was a great book and I fell in-love with the family. I know someone so much like Martha with her self-centered lack of basic social normal-ties, so her character really annoyed me. However, I loved Claire, Max and Cleo so it was a easy trade-off.
The Smart One is a wonderful story about the Coffeys' (and, by extension, those connected to them: relatives, girlfriends, best friends, friends from high school, colleagues) and the ups and downs in their lives. Each chapter by each POV is absolutely wonderful, drawing the readers into the lives of this family and the perspective of each character in focus. The author does a fantastic job is really bring their perspectives to life, understand what it means to be a mother worrying for her children long after her children had left home, what it's like to be an absolute low psychologically. The book's also a gem because of its take on life.
The Smart One is a lyrical and poignant novel about life, family and growing up. It's amusing, it's frustrating (like family can be at times), it's ultimately endearing; I was sad when I reached the last page of the novel because I wanted to continue hanging out with the Coffeys. I highly recommend this novel to anyone looking for something new to read.
My complete review of the novel was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2013/03/22/review-the-smart-one/
The Smart One is a lyrical and poignant novel about life, family and growing up. It's amusing, it's frustrating (like family can be at times), it's ultimately endearing; I was sad when I reached the last page of the novel because I wanted to continue hanging out with the Coffeys. I highly recommend this novel to anyone looking for something new to read.
My complete review of the novel was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2013/03/22/review-the-smart-one/
Based on the book jacket, I thought I would like this book more than I did. Generally I found the characters to be annoying and not very likeable, and the story in general was just kind of blah, I kept waiting for something more to happen, or for maybe one of the characters to finally grow up, but it just never happened. So, it was an okay book but not something I would recommend to anyone.
There were a couple of plot points that weren't explored as much as I thought they would be. Definitely some loose ends that I would have liked to have seen through. It was enjoyable though, and I saw a little bit of myself in several of the characters so it ended up being a little bit of a self-help read for me too.
I love Jennifer Close's writing style! Reading this book feels like you are having tea with four close friends, who shares their thoughts and feelings with what's happening in their lives. 4 instead of 5 stars because the ending feels a bit rushed and unfinished.
This review was originally published on Cozy Up With A Good Read
So within a week I have read two books that are focused on family relationships, and while they are similar in some ways they are both very different. I love books that deal with family relationships and this one is at the height of those books. When she finds herself in financial trouble, Claire finds herself having to move back home, with her parents and her older sister, who is already 30. From there, Jennifer uses this book to detail the struggles of moving back home after being on your own, and being an adult.
Jennifer writes the book from the perspective of three children of different ages, all coming home, and needing to deal with different issues. I enjoyed the different perspectives, yet at the same time I was confused by why some of the characters had their own perspectives. A part of me thinks it was to show the difference in family relationships based on age and circumstances. It was interesting to see how everyone dealt with their issues and how Jennifer Close writes about moving home, I think she hit a lot of great points, with parents always watching you closely and wondering about every little thing you do.
What really stood out in this book for me was the reality of some of the situations that Jennifer brings out. She really shows the difficulty of living on your own in a large city (in this case New York) and not making much money, the economy these days makes this so difficult (I went through this myself a little while ago and almost moved home myself). The characters are all so different when they are forced to move back home, it seems like they revert back to a younger version because that is how they are treated.
I had some issues getting through the book because of the many different perspectives, I felt like it was a bit jumpy at times. After awhile I could understand the different perspectives as we see each child coming to terms with moving back home for a different reason and how they each deal with their issues and learn to grow from the experience.
I came to really enjoy this book and the characters, even though each of them had their problems and were difficult to like for many reasons. The way Jennifer Close writes them, as a reader you come to understand why they are that way, and in the end I really enjoyed following a year in their lives. I really think that if you stick with this book it is a fun read in the end. I do wish there was a bit more of a resolution with some things in the end, but at the same time, this is a book about life and how things aren't always tied up with a smile.
This book won't be for everyone, but I do suggest giving it a chance. It's a book about real people with problems that many of us face today. This is a book that is all about family and what everyone will do to help others through their problems. That is what really brought this book up in my opinion.
So within a week I have read two books that are focused on family relationships, and while they are similar in some ways they are both very different. I love books that deal with family relationships and this one is at the height of those books. When she finds herself in financial trouble, Claire finds herself having to move back home, with her parents and her older sister, who is already 30. From there, Jennifer uses this book to detail the struggles of moving back home after being on your own, and being an adult.
Jennifer writes the book from the perspective of three children of different ages, all coming home, and needing to deal with different issues. I enjoyed the different perspectives, yet at the same time I was confused by why some of the characters had their own perspectives. A part of me thinks it was to show the difference in family relationships based on age and circumstances. It was interesting to see how everyone dealt with their issues and how Jennifer Close writes about moving home, I think she hit a lot of great points, with parents always watching you closely and wondering about every little thing you do.
What really stood out in this book for me was the reality of some of the situations that Jennifer brings out. She really shows the difficulty of living on your own in a large city (in this case New York) and not making much money, the economy these days makes this so difficult (I went through this myself a little while ago and almost moved home myself). The characters are all so different when they are forced to move back home, it seems like they revert back to a younger version because that is how they are treated.
I had some issues getting through the book because of the many different perspectives, I felt like it was a bit jumpy at times. After awhile I could understand the different perspectives as we see each child coming to terms with moving back home for a different reason and how they each deal with their issues and learn to grow from the experience.
I came to really enjoy this book and the characters, even though each of them had their problems and were difficult to like for many reasons. The way Jennifer Close writes them, as a reader you come to understand why they are that way, and in the end I really enjoyed following a year in their lives. I really think that if you stick with this book it is a fun read in the end. I do wish there was a bit more of a resolution with some things in the end, but at the same time, this is a book about life and how things aren't always tied up with a smile.
This book won't be for everyone, but I do suggest giving it a chance. It's a book about real people with problems that many of us face today. This is a book that is all about family and what everyone will do to help others through their problems. That is what really brought this book up in my opinion.
Girls in White Dresses was SO good... this was so Blah... writing wasn't nearly as good as her first book.
Clever and amusing story of a family coming together despite their individual struggles and idiosyncrises. This is a perfect beach read. I loved how the POV changed from character to character so that you felt like you really got to know each of these lovable family members. Definitely recommend.
It always comes as a shock when I’m reading a book about a twentysomething careening towards her thirties and the author makes a cultural reference to the character’s childhood — in this case, the Babysitter’s Club — and I realize that I’m essentially the same age as the character.
I’m not just growing up — I am a grown-up. Full-fledged adulthood, with all its bill-paying, career-building, and marriage-considering, responsible glory. And yet every time I have that realization, I am struck by the same two questions: how the hell did that happen, and why doesn’t it feel the way I thought it would?
So there’s a pick-me-up quote that circulates around the internet so much that I can’t recall to whom it should be attributed, but it goes something like, “The reason we are insecure is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
That’s one of the underlying themes of this book: perceptions of ourselves versus how others perceive us versus how we perceive them. The plot centers on the adult Coffey children who, in their twenties and at various stages of their respective quarterlife crises, return to live with their parents. Martha went to nursing school, though she should have known all along that she was really too anxious to be an ER nurse. She got a job at J. Crew instead, insisting that it would just be a transition, only to find that she’s still there six years later. Claire was engaged to a statistician named Doug, though she should have known all along that they were a bad fit. When the relationship ends, she finds herself alone in a Manhattan apartment she can’t afford and skyrocketing credit card debt. With no savings left and few options on the table, she quits her job and moves back home with her parents in the Philly suburbs. Max is a college senior with an obscenely beautiful girlfriend, Cleo, whom he secretly shares a campus apartment with in a move that makes the two twenty-one year-olds feel more grown-up than they really are.
And overseeing it all is Weezy, the enabling mother who keeps telling her husband things like, “Well, we are their parents…”
The title is a play on the idea that among our siblings, we each have a role to play — the smart one, the pretty one, the funny one — and we are often limited by the expectations of those roles despite the fact that they may not be entirely accurate. Martha’s often been considered the smart one — she excelled at science, did well in nursing school — but Claire cherishes her Scrabble record so much that she’s quietly incensed when Cleo outshines her during a family vacation. Weezy herself was always labelled the smart one; everyone expected that her sister Maureen’s success in life would come from marrying well, so it was a shock that Weezy was the one with the successful marriage and boring career while Maureen struggled as a single mother.
Close does a great job presenting empathetic, dimensional characters. I liked each of them even when they were behaving in unlikable ways because they felt very real (except for the men — Close doesn’t seem able to or interested in fleshing out her male characters, I’m not sure which, and so baby brother Max and father Will stay relatively flat on the page, as do the myriad husbands and boyfriends and fiancees that float through these pages). The rotating point of view reinforces the harm we do to ourselves by constantly comparing our situation to others’. There’s a lot comparing going on among these characters, such as when Martha tells her therapist that "Claire wanted a job and so she got one" or when Claire is miffed at Cleo’s vocab during a family Scrabble game (“Of course she read the dictionary for fun. If life was going to be unfair, it was going to go all the way.”). It didn’t come across to me as whining, though. It felt very real, because it truly is much easier to see the positives in someone else’s life and it much easier to make excuses for the negatives in one's own. I could relate, as that's something I've often found myself struggling with.
This is a very of-the-moment novel and you're probably only going to enjoy it if you can find something to relate to in the story. It’s a fact that many Millenials (and many who just get in under the wire as Gen-Xers) face more economic hurdles than older generations did when it comes to making it on their own. The job market is terrible, student loan debt is climbing, and no one seems able to offer any real solutions. This is also a very natural follow-up to Close’s debut, Girls in White Dresses, which examined similar issues from a less-family-centric view. Dresses was about what it’s like when it seems like all your friends are embarking on dream careers and marrying their Prince Charmings while you’re still getting paid to fetch muffins for people and bringing men home from the bar. The Smart One looks at how those dynamics mingle with our familial ones while rising above the usual conventions of chick lit. It’s smart, honest, and compulsively readable.
I’m not just growing up — I am a grown-up. Full-fledged adulthood, with all its bill-paying, career-building, and marriage-considering, responsible glory. And yet every time I have that realization, I am struck by the same two questions: how the hell did that happen, and why doesn’t it feel the way I thought it would?
So there’s a pick-me-up quote that circulates around the internet so much that I can’t recall to whom it should be attributed, but it goes something like, “The reason we are insecure is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
That’s one of the underlying themes of this book: perceptions of ourselves versus how others perceive us versus how we perceive them. The plot centers on the adult Coffey children who, in their twenties and at various stages of their respective quarterlife crises, return to live with their parents. Martha went to nursing school, though she should have known all along that she was really too anxious to be an ER nurse. She got a job at J. Crew instead, insisting that it would just be a transition, only to find that she’s still there six years later. Claire was engaged to a statistician named Doug, though she should have known all along that they were a bad fit. When the relationship ends, she finds herself alone in a Manhattan apartment she can’t afford and skyrocketing credit card debt. With no savings left and few options on the table, she quits her job and moves back home with her parents in the Philly suburbs. Max is a college senior with an obscenely beautiful girlfriend, Cleo, whom he secretly shares a campus apartment with in a move that makes the two twenty-one year-olds feel more grown-up than they really are.
And overseeing it all is Weezy, the enabling mother who keeps telling her husband things like, “Well, we are their parents…”
The title is a play on the idea that among our siblings, we each have a role to play — the smart one, the pretty one, the funny one — and we are often limited by the expectations of those roles despite the fact that they may not be entirely accurate. Martha’s often been considered the smart one — she excelled at science, did well in nursing school — but Claire cherishes her Scrabble record so much that she’s quietly incensed when Cleo outshines her during a family vacation. Weezy herself was always labelled the smart one; everyone expected that her sister Maureen’s success in life would come from marrying well, so it was a shock that Weezy was the one with the successful marriage and boring career while Maureen struggled as a single mother.
Close does a great job presenting empathetic, dimensional characters. I liked each of them even when they were behaving in unlikable ways because they felt very real (except for the men — Close doesn’t seem able to or interested in fleshing out her male characters, I’m not sure which, and so baby brother Max and father Will stay relatively flat on the page, as do the myriad husbands and boyfriends and fiancees that float through these pages). The rotating point of view reinforces the harm we do to ourselves by constantly comparing our situation to others’. There’s a lot comparing going on among these characters, such as when Martha tells her therapist that "Claire wanted a job and so she got one" or when Claire is miffed at Cleo’s vocab during a family Scrabble game (“Of course she read the dictionary for fun. If life was going to be unfair, it was going to go all the way.”). It didn’t come across to me as whining, though. It felt very real, because it truly is much easier to see the positives in someone else’s life and it much easier to make excuses for the negatives in one's own. I could relate, as that's something I've often found myself struggling with.
This is a very of-the-moment novel and you're probably only going to enjoy it if you can find something to relate to in the story. It’s a fact that many Millenials (and many who just get in under the wire as Gen-Xers) face more economic hurdles than older generations did when it comes to making it on their own. The job market is terrible, student loan debt is climbing, and no one seems able to offer any real solutions. This is also a very natural follow-up to Close’s debut, Girls in White Dresses, which examined similar issues from a less-family-centric view. Dresses was about what it’s like when it seems like all your friends are embarking on dream careers and marrying their Prince Charmings while you’re still getting paid to fetch muffins for people and bringing men home from the bar. The Smart One looks at how those dynamics mingle with our familial ones while rising above the usual conventions of chick lit. It’s smart, honest, and compulsively readable.