Receive Your Copy Nine Months In The Life Of An Old Maid Scripted By Judith Rossner Issued As Publication

gem plucked from the pages of Nancy Pearl's Book Lust series, Yet another book I checked out from the library and enjoyed so much that I will have a hard time managing to return it on time.


I enjoyed the emotional plots, the needy characters, the unfolding of their stories but the best, as often is with me, was the prose.
Especially prose that introduced ideas new to me,

Here are the very first two paragraphs:

A nightmare is terrifying because it can never be undone.
A piece of paper tore with an incredibly loud screeching noise, My eyes opened. Then what If the paper had torn while I was awake I could have taped it but if the tearing of a dream paper tore me then I was torn forever.
I could scream for my sister Mimi and she might or might not hear me and come in to find out what was wrong, and if she did come my fear might be somewhat allayed, but nothing she or anyone else said could ever make that piece of paper whole again because it had torn in a world where we were powerless.

While in the beautiful wellordered lie of our everyday lives there was almost nothing we cold not do, We commanded the flowers to grow and within the more or less predictable limitations of soil and weather, they obeyed our commands.
We turned wool into rugs and sweaters, crab apples into jelly, wood into fire, We put screens on the windows and summer came we replaced them with storm windows to permit the snow to fall.
Our lives denied our nightmares, which was why I stayed awake for all but four or five hours each night,


What an amazing way to think, I enjoy causation vs correlation conundrums as well as the powers of neurotic thinking, I also sleephours a night, so what does that say about me Wow, This was intense and interesting and hypnotic and I feel like having a passionate discussion with someone else who's read this book about the characters, things left unspoken, things hinted at.


There's so much to say, Firstly, this book stalked me, Oddly for an obscurish oldishnovel,

it kept jumping at me from the secondhand bookstore shelf for months and I kept putting it back, somewhat put off by the blurb which turned out to be slightly inaccurate anyway, only to get sucked in by ac library sale based on the title alone, forgetting that I had considered and ignored this book previously.


The blurb says it's about two adult sisters Mimi and Beth who live together in a mansion and then one gets pregnant and their lives change.
Yes. But it's so much more, It's a dysfunctional family drama with more characters than just the sisters:
the difficult stepbrother Vincent from their mother's first marriage, whom she abandoned as a baby along with her first husband, by running off with her second husband
Mimi's husband Barney who is struggling to adjust to his wife's pregnancy and the changes in the household
Their glamorous and exotic absentee parents who choose to live in Hollywood, and have ever since the kids were young, swooping in occasionally with gifts and fleeing again, leaving Mimi and Beth and later Vincent to the care of a housekeeper.


The entire book is told from Beth's perspective and Beth is emotionally volatile and, it is heavily suggested, mentally ill.
What is wrong with her, we don't know, but she's been hospitalized several times but not for a long while, She is vulnerable, very introspective, highly observant and has a penchant for identifying the true natures of other people's characters and relationship dynamics.


Relationship dynamics are front and center in this novel and figuring them out is the puzzle offered by the author.
You think you've figured them out only to be stunned by yet another layer revealed, And relationships between all the characters are really well fleshed out, so there's a lot to get stuck into, It reminded me of Anne Tyler's novels,

Several things happen that challenge the relationship dynamics, Mimi's pregnancy being only one of them, New people become intertwined with the family, the property where they live is under threat, . . And throughout it all, Beth remains an enigma, I don't know what to make of her, Is she who she says she is Or is she a master manipulator The ending is ambiguous, leaving me wanting more.
I spent so long in her head but I still don't feel like I know her, . . Which was intentional by the author, I think, I really enjoyed Beth's ability to see beyond the surface of what people say to each other, She hears the conversation and she interprets it for us as to what is actually being said, Is she correct Well, we live inside her head so in that context, yes, But her own thoughts and motivations remain elusive,

I should say that there are some trigger warnings, There's a discussion of abortion, the use of a racial slur in passing the N word twice, there's a hint at sexual abuse maybe.
None of it is graphic but it's there, Quick read. Two sisters living together, one with “mental issues, ” Kind of interesting that Beth never leaves the house and is the one so dependent on everyone, By the end of the book, you find out thats not the case, This book was beyond cynical, The narrator was unlikable and the whole cast of characters were dysfunctional and unsympathetic, Much of the dialog was amusing, which is why I'm giving this two instead of one, At the same time, it bothered me that all the wit was so caustic often downright abusive, Not to mention the actual abusive behaviors depicted or alluded to in the story, There seemed to be something a little antiintellectual about the focus on exposing how hypocritical and pretentious these people are, these Hollywood people, these leftwing, antiwar writertypes.
this book was ripped off by Running with Scissors From the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Mr, Goodbar, comes the story of two sisters as their lives are turned upside down,

Beautiful sisters, Mimi and Beth grew up alone in the glamorous, desolate mansion in Welford Heights called Yiytzo, Now, both in their thirties, the two womens comfortable, codependant lives are overturned when their father decides to sell a large portion of his estate and Mimi discovers that after fifteen years of marriage that shes pregnant.
Judith Perelman Rossner was an American novelist, best known for hernovel Looking for Mr, Goodbar, which was inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn and examined the underside of the seventies sexual liberation movement, Though Looking for Mr. Goodbar remained Rossners best known and best selling work, she continued to write, Her most successful post Goodbar novel wass August, about the relationship between a troubled young woman and her psychoanalyst who has emotional troubles of her own.
Judith Perelman Rossner was an American novelist, best known for hernovel Looking for Mr, Goodbar, which was inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn and examined the underside of the seventies sexual liberation movement, Though Looking for Mr. Goodbar remained Rossner's best known and best selling work, she continued to write, Her most successful post Goodbar novel was's August, about the relationship between a troubled young woman and her psychoanalyst who has emotional troubles of her own.
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