LOVE, WORK, CHILDREN by Cheryl Mendelsohn

I read a review on one of my favorite book blogs, Books for Breakfast, that I thought I would share here.

Here is the review:

MendelsonSometimes I have purchased just enough at bn.com to miss the free shipping by a few dollars. When that happens, I check out the reduced price books, what I envision as lonely hardcovers choking beneath the dust in the warehouses. Most of the time I draw a stinker, a book that is not worth noting on this blog. But there are times I am lucky.

Love, Work Children is one of those times. Centered around the Frankl family – and its friends and coworkers – this novel tracks the seemingly random meetings and pairings in a small neighborhood in NYC.

Peter Frankl, in his early 60s, has suffered through an unsatisfactory marriage for the sake of his children, but watching their failures in love makes him question the success of that age-old decision of “staying together for the kids.” His wife is in a car accident and remains comatose for months, giving Peter time to realize his true desires.

Add his awkward daughter who is studying to be a musicologist, his socially inept son just finishing an MBA, and their circle of friends and it’s a smorgasbord of love affairs and mismatches.

Even with the plethora of characters and plot lines, I found it easy to follow simply because they were entertaining and memorable. It is a happy-ever-after story, but that doesn’t seem to be cliched when I could truly care about the players. I shut the book with a satisfied sigh.

I would like to read this book. (Although one reviewer on Amazon said, “I want the four hours back that I wasted on this dreck.”)