Hachette recently sent me a copy of I'm So Happy For You, by Lucinda Rosenfeld, which is due out next week. From Amazon:
Rosenfeld delves into the thornier side of female friendship in this hip take on modern womanhood. Wendy and Daphne have been best friends forever, but their relationship, sketched out in e-mails that cascade from their group of girlfriends, comes to a breaking point when Daphne suddenly pulls herself together, stops fooling around with a married man and finds a new love interest who happens to be handsome, rich and obnoxious. In quick succession, Daphne ties the knot, moves into a brownstone and gets pregnant. Meanwhile, Wendy, a low-paid editorial drone who's been trying and failing to conceive with her slacker husband, feels that her own life is thrown into miserable relief. She begins to lash out at Daphne, first passively, and then rather aggressively. In the course of a few twists, misunderstandings and revealed secrets, Wendy questions whether the source of her inferiority complex is Daphne or herself. The two friends are by turns frustrating and sympathetic, while Rosenfeld takes a dark, hilarious and painfully accurate view of the less-than-pure reasons why women stay friends.
I've not read anything by Lucinda Rosenfeld before, though I've been interested in her novel What She Saw, in which each chapter is devoted to a man in the narrator's history.
Half-Deserted Streets blog said I'm So Happy For You is "an incredibly realistic and truthful look at female friendships. As a girl with a number of close friends, I know how important, and yet how hard at times they can be…. I really enjoyed the honest look at the female characters. It's depressing, but refreshingly truthful. And it's even incredibly funny at times! I found myself chuckling and sometimes pointing to the page, guffawing because I've said/done/thought the same thing."
Thoughts From an Evil Overlord also gave I'm So Happy For You a good review. Marie Claire's monthly book club feature took it on this month, and three out of four of the readers recommended it .
Sounds like a light but engaging read – I think I will take it with me on vacation next week.