December 6, 2010
Four friends confront a secret from their past in Clayton's disjointed follow-up to The Wednesday Sisters. Thirty years ago, Laney, Mia, Betts, and Ginger were roommates and best friends in law school. Collectively nicknamed the Ms. Bradwells by a professor (after a woman who fought to be admitted to the bar in 1873), their relationship has weathered marriage, divorce, children, and death, but when
Betts's Supreme Court nomination is threatened by questions about the death of a young man at a party they attended decades ago, the women retreat to the scene of the crime—Ginger's mother's summer house—to untangle the past. But this clunky novel is less about that mystery—its poky reveal stretches the limits of human patience—and more about the women's histories and careers, and the complexities of their friendships and families. Clayton finds some traction in discussing what it means to be a woman in both public and private life, but lack of individuated voices (poetry-quoting Ginger is the only unique one among the four) and unruly swerves between past and present make following the story more work than it should be.
November 1, 2010
Clayton's latest novel (The Wednesday Sisters, 2008, etc.) concerns four highly successful women exploring their friendship, along with the secrets they have shared and kept from each other for years.
Betts, Ginger, Laney and Mia graduated from law school in the early 1980s—their eponymous name for themselves refers to an 1873 ruling that denied women the right to practice law. Ironically, Ginger, the daughter of fiery feminist Faith, stopped practicing law when she got stuck on the mommy track and has become a poet. Mia, long divorced from her law-school boyfriend, who turned out to be gay, has also left the law to become a journalist. African-American Laney lives in an Atlanta suburb, where she is running for political office. And Betts, a widowed single mother and law professor, has been nominated to the Supreme Court. Her friends come to D.C. to support her during confirmation hearings, which go swimmingly until she's asked about a mysterious death that occurred in 1982 at a house in Maryland that she was visiting. Amazingly, Betts leaves her advisors (and White House contacts) behind to spend the weekend with her friends, hiding out at the very house where the death occurred: Chawterley, Ginger's family's vacation estate on an island in Chesapeake Bay. As the women play Scrabble and reminisce, their private sorrows come to light: betrayals, affairs, heartaches. They also try to piece together what happened that long-ago weekend. It started out as a joyful vacation lark until Ginger's brother Beau showed up with his villainous cousin Trey and friend Doug. While Mia and Beau hooked up, much to Betts's jealous chagrin, Laney fended off Trey's increasingly flirtatious advances, which culminated in a vicious rape. The next day he was found shot dead in what was written off as suicide. The truth that emerges is more complicated.
Though Clayton telegraphs her political points along with her plot and characterizations, there is a definite market for this kind of self-congratulatory women's empowerment. This one meets all the requirements of Book Club Lit.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
January 1, 2011
Mia, Ginger, Laney, and Betts met in law school in 1979, when they were nicknamed the Ms. Bradwells by a professor citing an antiquated ruling that denied women the right to practice law. Twenty years later, the four friends have supported one another through marriage, motherhood, divorces, and death. Both Mia and Ginger have left the law to pursue writing, Laney is running for public office, and Betts is a law professor. When Betts is nominated to the Supreme Court, the Senate hearing exposes a suspicious death that occurred during a vacation weekend at the home of Ginger's mother, a renowned feminist lawyer. In multiple perspectives, the four Ms. Bradwells reveal secrets they've kept for decades. VERDICT As she did in her best-selling The Wednesday Sisters, Clayton here explores female relationships but far less engagingly. Instead of true characterization, Clayton resorts to literary quotes, legalese, and Latin verbiage to give her characters unique voices. Still, fans of Elizabeth Noble, Ann Hood, Elin Hilderbrand, and other luminaries of female friendship fiction will find much to captivate them. [Author tour; library marketing.]--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 1, 2010
Clayton's latest novel (The Wednesday Sisters, 2008, etc.) concerns four highly successful women exploring their friendship, along with the secrets they have shared and kept from each other for years.
Betts, Ginger, Laney and Mia graduated from law school in the early 1980s--their eponymous name for themselves refers to an 1873 ruling that denied women the right to practice law. Ironically, Ginger, the daughter of fiery feminist Faith, stopped practicing law when she got stuck on the mommy track and has become a poet. Mia, long divorced from her law-school boyfriend, who turned out to be gay, has also left the law to become a journalist. African-American Laney lives in an Atlanta suburb, where she is running for political office. And Betts, a widowed single mother and law professor, has been nominated to the Supreme Court. Her friends come to D.C. to support her during confirmation hearings, which go swimmingly until she's asked about a mysterious death that occurred in 1982 at a house in Maryland that she was visiting. Amazingly, Betts leaves her advisors (and White House contacts) behind to spend the weekend with her friends, hiding out at the very house where the death occurred: Chawterley, Ginger's family's vacation estate on an island in Chesapeake Bay. As the women play Scrabble and reminisce, their private sorrows come to light: betrayals, affairs, heartaches. They also try to piece together what happened that long-ago weekend. It started out as a joyful vacation lark until Ginger's brother Beau showed up with his villainous cousin Trey and friend Doug. While Mia and Beau hooked up, much to Betts's jealous chagrin, Laney fended off Trey's increasingly flirtatious advances, which culminated in a vicious rape. The next day he was found shot dead in what was written off as suicide. The truth that emerges is more complicated.
Though Clayton telegraphs her political points along with her plot and characterizations, there is a definite market for this kind of self-congratulatory women's empowerment. This one meets all the requirements of Book Club Lit.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)