It’s the kind of story that keeps parents up at night. After Anne and Marco Conti’s babysitter cancels at the last minute, the couple argues about what to do. Anne wants to cancel their dinner date next door. Her neighbor Cynthia has made it very clear their six-month old daughter Cora is not welcome. Marco convinces Anne to go anyway. They’ll bring the baby monitor. They’ll check on their daughter every thirty minutes. She’ll be fine. Annie, wine-drunk, struggling with postnatal depression and watching her […]
Ah Amnesia, it’s been too long…
First let me address the elephant in the room: I have failed at my bid to read 52 books this year seeing at I have only made it to number three and it is October. Sigh. When I decided to go for a cannonball I was pregnant with Love Spawn #2 and figured I would read while my belly grew and I was able to move less and less. Then life threw a curve ball by way of a difficult pregnancy and all bets were […]
What the hell did I get up to last night?
3.5 stars Rachel, trying to drown the sorrows of her recent divorce in alcohol and denial travels to London on the train every morning and back to the suburb where she shares a flat with an old friend in the evenings. As she passes the area where she used to live, she observes a seemingly golden couple and makes up a fantasy narrative about their life to comfort herself in her loneliness. She’s named them Jess and Jason and believes them to have a perfect […]
Pretty Fly for an Antiquated Gay Stereotype
A couple of points to start off with: 1. I never saw the 1999 film with Matt Damon and Jude Law 2. We’re going to ignore the “homosexual villain” trope used in this book. It was an unfortunate thing in the 1950s and 1960s but Tom Ripley is a fascinating character beyond that. Tom Ripley is a small time con-artist and forger eking (and gay man, even though it’s not said explicitly) out a living in New York City when the father of Dickie […]