March 9, 2020
Sullivan’s intimate, incisive latest (after Saints for all Occasions) explores the evolving friendship between a new mother and her babysitter. After journalist Elisabeth Ronson moves with her husband, Andrew, and infant son, Gil, from Brooklyn to Upstate New York, Elisabeth struggles with the demands of motherhood and faces loneliness and disconnection. Then she hires Sam O’Connell, an art student at the nearby women’s college, to babysit. Elisabeth likes the upbeat Sam, though she has misgivings about Sam’s 30-something boyfriend, Clive, who proves to be untrustworthy,. Elisabeth and Sam correspond over Christmas break while Sam visits Clive in London and Elisabeth spends the holiday entertaining her parents and in-laws at home. Elisabeth and Sam argue about Clive, and Elisabeth’s father-in-law, George, provides another source of tension: Elisabeth finds his leftist rants tiresome, while Sam, via email, takes encouragement from George to campaign for improved working conditions on her campus, and struggles to understand if Elisabeth sees her as a friend or employee. Observations on domestic and social interactions add weight to Sullivan’s inquiry into Elisabeth and Sam’s interior lives, showing where the cracks seep into their friendship. Readers will be captivated by Sullivan’s authentic portrait of modern motherhood.
April 15, 2020
A new mother with a successful career and her babysitter form an unlikely bond in a small college town. Elisabeth, one of the protagonists of Sullivan's latest novel, has just moved with her husband, Andrew, and baby, Gil, from brownstone Brooklyn to a remote college town 250 miles away--or as she tells her New York City friends, upstate, "but not, like, cool upstate."A successful journalist and author, she misses her old friends and community--although she still compulsively devours the postings on her old neighborhood parent listserv--and hasn't been able to compel herself to make new ones, secretly suspecting she won't like the other women in her town. Eventually she finds a confidante and companion in Sam, a student at the nearby women's college whom she hires as Gil's babysitter. Unlike Elisabeth, who comes from a family as wealthy and privileged as it is dysfunctional, Sam, an aspiring artist with an older British boyfriend who may be a threat to her career ambitions, comes from a big, warm, middle-class family and is funding her college education through a scholarship, a cafeteria work-study job, student loans, and off-campus child care work. The inequity in the two women's relationship and status is mostly lost on Elisabeth but not on Sam. But Sam, who finds common cause with Elisabeth's father-in-law in fighting for the overlooked and economically disadvantaged, has her own blind spots in relation to the women she works alongside in her dorm cafeteria. When both Elisabeth and Sam meddle in other people's lives with the best intentions, well, suffice it to say that things don't go precisely as they had hoped. Sullivan, whose bestselling work includes Saints for All Occasions (2017), writes with empathy for her characters even as she reveals their flaws and shortcomings. And while the story she tells focuses primarily on two women from different backgrounds and at different stages of life, it also illuminates broader issues about money, privilege, and class; marriage, family, and friendship; and the dueling demands of career and domesticity with which many women struggle. This perceptive novel about a complex friendship between two women resonates as broadly as it does deeply.
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April 1, 2020
Trying to figure out what to do when school ends, and how she'll ever repay her student loans, college senior Sam is looking for a job. A recent transplant from New York City, journalist Elizabeth needs a babysitter for her infant son as she adjusts to life in a small town and tries to balance her career with the challenges of new motherhood. When Sam and Elizabeth meet, they form an instant connection and quickly become an important presence in one another's lives. But when Sam develops an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth's father-in-law, the differences between the two women become painfully clear, leading to unexpected consequences for both. Sullivan (Saints For All Occasions, 2017) once again displays her keen observation skills with this insightful examination of two women at very different places in their lives. With well-developed, very real-feeling characters the story moves seamlessly from one perspective to the other. Friends and Strangers is a deeply personal yet profound exploration of motherhood, friendships, and the role of privilege in determining how we shape our lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
June 5, 2020
Thirtysomething Elisabeth almost has it all. She's happily married to Andrew and is mother to adorable baby Gil. Geographically, however, she is unmoored, having left the enriching bustle of New York City with her husband to settle in a small town 250 miles away. Andrew wants to be closer to his parents and focus on inventing a groundbreaking solar grill. Meanwhile, Elisabeth's career has hit a snag. A journalist whose first book was a best seller, she's now under contract to write a third book but is stuck and despite pressure from her editor wastes too much time texting her best friend and diving into Facebook. She turns to the local women's college to hire a part-time nanny and lucks out with Sam, a talented artist in her senior year. The two women cement their uncommon closeness with a growing list of secrets even as their shared impulse to meddle in the lives of others threatens to send their friendship careening toward disaster. VERDICT Best-selling novelist Sullivan (Commencement) humanizes the roadblocks to successful relationships and the modern tools that help or hinder those bonds--career networking, in vitro fertilization, social media, social justice--in a deceptively quiet tale delivering big truths, complete with an enticing epilog 10 years in the future. [See Prepub Alert, 1/15/20.] --Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2020
Up all night with her new son and barely engaging with her work during the day, journalist Elisabeth finds it a comfort to talk with Sam, the babysitter she hires from the local women's college, but the gap between them comes into stark relief when Sam befriends Elisabeth's father-in-law. From New York Times best-selling author of Saints for All Occasions and more.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.