From Publishers Weekly
Kabak's debut, set in Wales, covers familiar familial territory. When 40-something Kate Cadogan arrives home to find her house trashed by her teenage son, Charlie, she succumbs to a long overdue need to take stock of her desperate housewife life. We revisit Kate from her 1970s teenhood forward: her mother Biddy's cold and obtrusive "controlling passion" rules the family roost and dictates everything from Kate's clothes to her intended career, while her father is devoted but feckless. Kate is buoyed by a cast of sympathetic and supportive characters: her diehard friends Ingrid and Moira, her sweet and knowing grandparents Magmu and Griff and her aunt Oona, a kindred spirit. After a disastrous but passionate relationship, Kate meets businessman Rodney Fanshaw. All is well, but "Rodders" ignores her wish to work, is even more inconsiderate in bed and spends more time at sport than at home, leaving Kate lonely. Dejected and depressed, Kate pours herself into house and child until the moment in the prologue when she breaks down. The dialogue is chick-lit generic but exact; scenes play out fluidly and are nicely detailed, particularly in Kate's sophisticated foodyism. Kabak doesn't provide the frisson of the racy TV mockudrama, but she does tell Kate's story with warmth and humor.
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From Booklist
Kate Cadogan returns home from vacation to find her home utterly trashed from a party thrown by her rebellious teenage son. When both the son and Kate's husband are completely indifferent to the carnage, she realizes that her life needs to change. Flash back to her adolescence in a small town in 1960s England, where she and her Catholic school chums daydream about clothes, independence, and boys, boys, boys. Her critical, controlling mother is fanatically opposed to teenage dating, yet Kate manages to sneak around, which leads to the scandal of sex before marriage. A failed relationship and unplanned pregnancy throw Kate into the arms of her current husband, Rodney. The sports-obsessed businessman isn't exactly Kate's dream man, but her mother approves, and Kate longs for the security of marriage. Flash forward to Kate's lackluster 20-year marriage to Rodney and his increasingly maddening, single-minded pursuit of "crickethockeygolforsquash." Her dilemma spreads before her in the ravages of her ruined home. This is charming, compassionate look at how one woman discovers that self-fulfillment shouldn't be postponed forever.
Misha StoneCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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