Amy Poeppel

Far and Away

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by Amy Poeppel

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This is the story of what happens when a family from an upper middle class Dallas suburb exchanges homes for the summer with an affluent husband and wife from urban Berlin. Despite each being thrust into totally unfamiliar cultures and settings they manage to not only survive, but thrive. More or less. The core characters were all likable good people, which is the key to their ultimate success. And the premise was very entertaining. I’ve read 3 other books by this author and this was a close second to Small Admissions, still my favorite by this author. Lucy decides to get the hell out of Dodge Dallas when her sweet, brilliant and somewhat nerdy son Jack is expelled from school and cruelly crucified on social media and in their social circle (It was all a big misunderstanding). I was caught up in the injustice of it all and my fondness for Jack. Always in the background was my hope for eventual redemption and comeuppances. Lucy has a very happy and solid marriage but unfortunately she has to deal with the crisis on her own as her husband, a NASA scientist, is on a special project and incommunicado for 6 months. On the other side of the Atlantic, Otto, a surgeon, who is unhappy at his work and with his colleagues, gets a temporary job in Dallas and moves himself and his wife Greta, a private art curator. I should say loyal wife Greta moves them, because stiff and formal Otto is very much a traditional husband, and it is Greta that handles all of the day to day home type business.

Amy Poeppel’s books are all about the characters, although this one is jam packed with plot developments and many exploits as well. There is never a dull moment. In this novel, it is Greta and Otto who go through the most growth and change. They are different people by the end of this story. Lucy, Jack, and Lucy and Mason’s young twin girls are perfectly fine and happy as they are, barring Jack’s struggles and the fear for his crumbling future. They have other challenges, don’t get me wrong. In addition to trying to keep her rambunctious twins from breaking all of Greta’s priceless antiques in the lovely but museum-like (but tiny!) city apartment, Lucy has to contend with how to keep her bosses from finding out she is no longer in the United States (she mostly works from home), and more importantly, dealing with Jack wanting to meet his Scandinavian biological father when he doesn’t even know Jack exists, as well as the absence of her loving and normally involved husband. Meanwhile Otto and Greta have to contend with how to get Lucy’s huge modern suburban smart home to obey them, their (shock!) unruly dogs, too friendly and interested neighbors, Otto’s sociable new work colleagues, barbeques, and the very casual lifestyle of Dallas. On top of that, Greta has an ethical struggle and possible career-ender regarding a Vermeer painting that might have been painted by his daughter Maria instead. She also is concerned about her daughter Emmi who seems to be pulling away from her, and a mother that might be having an affair with a much younger man.

Stern and formal Otto’s enthusiastic embrace of everything to do with the Dallas lifestyle combined with Greta’s bewilderment over her husband’s new personality and her own more cautious and suspicious approach, provide much of the humor. When kitchen-adverse Otto brags that he has learned how to bake “stickerpoodles”, Greta is totally flummoxed. Despite his failures as a husband, Otto was very endearing in his ultimately successful efforts to fit in and his fracturing of the American language was too funny.

But the book is so much more than two fish out of water stories and how they end up being just what the doctor ordered. Amy Poeppel has a lot to say about social media, hypocrisy, gossip and how vicious and destructive it can be. And it shows how ordinary people can be brave and not go with the toxic mob mentality and make a difference with kindness, common sense, and fairness. It is not a romance at all, but by the end we have five happy couples, or maybe more, I lost count. The epilogue was all that I hoped, which means it was probably a little over the top.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Musical Chairs

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by Amy Poeppel

Early in this “slice of life” novel, I said to myself, “Are we supposed to like these people?” Because I think we were! Our main character, Bridget, though very wealthy and elite, was letting her summer cottage fall down around her ears, and wore stretched-out sweatpants when going visiting in public. It struck me as something that only a rich privileged person would feel OK doing. As if, along with her deliberate ignorance of internet-based technology, she was trying to cultivate a phony “Look how normal and down-to-earth I am!” reputation. It really put my back up. Later we learn why she is like she is and I felt better about her.

Bridget was not a messy person by nature. She was clean, and she had good taste. But she had a blind spot when it came to seeing when change was needed. When a lightbulb burned out, it stayed burned out. When a window latch broke, it stayed broken. Screens stayed torn; floors stayed damaged. She was sentimental, keeping T-shirts for decades, regardless of their condition, and driving the same car she’d gotten when the kids were born, convinced it would have its feelings hurt if she sold it. Marge was no therapist, but it was clear that losing a mother to cancer at only eleven, the greatest, most difficult loss imaginable, had left Bridget wanting to keep everything in her life steady. The same house, the same job, the same music partner.

I wonder why she didn’t think her house had feeling too. And I had the same mixed feelings about her best friend Will, her adult children, her sister, and her father, all of whom we spend a great deal of time with. Also, Gavin, another main character but separate from the family. There were a lot of characters in this book, and all were interesting and well-drawn. But the more I got to know the main ones, the more I found to disapprove of. They, most of them, were essentially all good people at heart, which I recognized. But I was still irritated. I guess that’s a compliment to Amy Poeppel’s writing and her deft true-to-life characterizations. The core group ended up growing and changing for the better and by the end, I wished them well in their, thankfully, new directions. But thank goodness for Marge, the housekeeper, Kevin the handyman, and to a lesser extent, Jackie, her father’s new P.A. (although she was a bit prissy about the cats drinking out of the faucet.)

This book, like the previous two I have read by this author, is centered around first-world problems. But for some reason, this did not bother me in those. In fact, I enjoyed that aspect. It seemed like there were more important things at stake and their problems and dramas were not entirely of their own making. And they did things about them.

I was entertained by this book. There was humor, a little drama, a little suspense, a little romance, and I loved the ending. Everything came together nicely.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Small Admissions

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by Amy Poeppel

This was an absolute delight. It is the story of Kate, a STEM doctoral candidate on the fast track whose life falls apart when she gives it all up to move to Paris with a guy who immediately dumps her. At the Airport. Heartbroken and her promising career in shambles, she is virtually catatonic for a year, having to move into her married sister Angela’s Tribeca apartment to be taken care of. When she finally starts showing some signs of life, Angela sets her up both in an apartment and with an interview for a position as assistant director of admissions for one of the most elite Manhattan private schools. Even though Kate is totally unqualified and massively screws up the interview with inappropriate comments and her too-short skirt, she gets the job much to her and the reader’s surprise.

“ I should probably tell you right off the bat-I’ve never actually had a real job before, so I don’t really have many of what you might call skills…for example, I’m trying to become a better judge of character or at least better than I used to be. These days I don’t tend to like anyone.”
Mr. Bigley looked confused.
“What I meant is, I’m discriminating. But I’m not an asshole. I bet that’s a good quality for anyone working in admissions. Right?”….
“You can often glean a thing or two from how people dress. I really didn’t know what to wear today. Everyone said, “Wear a blazer,” but for some reason, I feel totally dykey in a blazer. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian…I swear-given the choice-you’d rather see me naked than in a suit….It’s like I always say, better a naked lesbian than…me…in a blazer.” What was happening? She shook her head and felt a trickle of sweat run down her back. “Was that out loud?” she asked and fanned herself with a copy of the school newspaper.
“But speaking of apparel,” she said suddenly….”

And on she goes.

Although always a little batty, Kate is as intelligent as they come and realizes this unexpected opportunity could be her salvation. Fully expecting to be fired any minute, she buckles down to learn the job and do it well.
Kate’s journey is told from multiple viewpoints including letters, emails, and messages. It would probably be very confusing listening to it on Audible! Besides her own, told in 3rd person, we hear intermittently from two concerned close friends since college(one in first person), her long-suffering sister, and even the Park Avenue parents who will do anything to get their little darlings into the revered school. Towards the end of the book, another party chimes in out of the blue and tells his side of the story solving the ongoing mystery of why “Kate-tastrophe” was hired to begin with and was able to hang on until she became an indispensable, if always unconventional, member of the close-knit team.

Although at first impatient with her self-indulgent wallowing in her misery and general hopelessness, I grew to love and respect Kate. It was interesting how the stronger she becomes, the more the foibles and flaws are revealed in her supportive supposedly “together” friends and family. We get to know them quite well directly and indirectly. We get a peek into the messed-up lives and relationships of a few select parents who are wrestling with the admissions process. And their good, bad, and misunderstood children. The book is mostly hilarious and told in an imaginative and unusual manner which reveals the layers and differing perspectives of many people and happenings. The humor is comic, wise, dry, and irreverent and the story takes some surprising and sometimes delightful turns. And one is pretty shocking, although, yes, I should have seen it coming. The tangents it sometimes goes out on turned out to be some of my favorite parts and turn out not to be not so tangential after all.


I really liked Limelight by this author, but this book, her first book, I loved. And she has two more. Only two? Hope she is busy coming up with more!

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Limelight

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By Amy Poeppel

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this excellent book on Audible. The reader, Carly Robbins, was perfection and I can’t imagine how the personalities could be better portrayed on the page as they were by this actress. She particularly nails the narration of Allison, our estimable heroine, the sulky brattiness of Charlotte, one of her daughters, her wise and very active mother, and our other main character, L’Enfant terrible Carter Reid.

Allison Brinkley is a teacher and married mother of 3 precocious children who is excited to move her family to New York City when her perfectly wonderful attorney husband gets a big promotion. They are leaving Dallas Texas to live the dream in the city that never sleeps! The Culture! The Opportunities! The Restaurants! The Excitement! The Shopping! The Charming Brownstone on the Upper West Side! Cue the rude sound of the needle scratching a vinyl record. Does the reality match the fantasy? Of course not.

Her teaching job(s) fizzle, she misses her dynamo of a mother, the kids are not adjusting well, the schools leave a lot to be desired, the other moms are cliquish and snobby, etc., etc. And trade in that brownstone in a leafy neighborhood for a too-small apartment in a modern high-rise somewhere in Manhattan not near Central Park.

But somehow things start to look up when, through a series of unlikely events, she becomes the Personal Assistant to Carter Reid, a Justin Bieberesque super pop star. Allison is cheerful, nurturing, patient, responsible, intelligent, hardworking, and chock-full of integrity. Carter has never experienced anyone like her. And vice versa. Carter is a rude, ignorant, lazy, hedonistic degenerate with the manners of a feral child. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but just a little. How it turns into a match made in heaven makes for a very entertaining journey. It is by turns frustrating, hopeful, a little scary, funny, and heartwarming. It is one step forward and one step, sometimes two steps, back as Allison assumes responsibility for whipping Carter into shape for the Broadway debut he is bound and determined not to do the work for. But Carter’s whole future is on the line, and though Allison is determined not to fail, it is not until she enlists the help of her teenage daughter Charlotte that we see there just might be some small possibility of saving Carter from himself.

As much as this book is centered around the development of Allison’s relationship with Carter, it is also about her whole family and their adjustment to the city, work, school, and creating a new social circle. By the end of the novel, they are all New Yorkers, even though super smart Charlotte will be moving to the West Coast to attend Cal Tech. And although no, (spoiler alert) Carter does not win a Tony award and thank Allison during his nationally televised acceptance speech in front of the glitterati of Broadway for saving his career, it ends pretty well for him too.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.