Product Description

To keep her fifteen-year-old son safe from the everyday temptations of New York City–namely sex, drugs, and all-night clubs–single mom Lily Davis decides it’s time she and Sam move to Sakonnet Bay, a picturesque town on the Long Island coast with a much slower pace. Or so she thinks.

For Sam makes a friend who speaks only in Klingon–and before you can say wejpuh, they’re having sex on the kitchen table. Lily lands a great job as a columnist for the local paper, but the folks in town are gossiping about her run-in with a nipping dog and police sergeant Tom McKee. Most disturbing, there’s the undeniable attraction between Lily and the very married McKee. And when she and Tom stumble upon what appears to be a dead woman in a house they’re . . . well . . . trespassing in, Lily’s picture-postcard world begins to peel at the edges. How much passion, guilt, and murder can one woman take?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #538341 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-28
• Released on: 2001-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ephron is best known for her screenwriting work (Sleepless in Seattle; You've Got Mail), but her talent for witty dialogue flourishes in her second novel (after Hanging Up), set in Sakonnet Bay, Long Island, where freelance reporter and single mom Lily Davis moves from Manhattan with her 15-year-old son, Sam. Lily decided to move to the small town when she realized Sam was sneaking out to nightclubs and hiding a knife in his bureau drawer, but her efforts to give him safe harbor are thwarted by his sullen rebelliousness and his Klingon-speaking girlfriend, Deidre. An inveterate New Yorker, Lily is uncomfortable in the cozy, gossipy town and fearful of almost everything. Do the deer grazing on her front lawn have rabies? Are Sam's antisocial tendencies and dreadful haircut "normal range behavior"? Has she become the town joke for insulting police Sgt. Tom McKee during an incident involving a dog whose head got stuck in a pitcher? Soon Lily has serious issues to worry about, such as the naked woman--dead, drugged or sleeping--she and Tom discover in a supposedly empty house. When the woman's body is later found after having been haphazardly buried by someone in a swampy area, Lily starts sleuthing to find out what happened. Not only does this investigation reveal a less than idyllic side to Sakonnet Bay, it also forces her to confront disturbing truths about her son, her divorce and her growing feelings for the married Tom. Despite billing herself as an "irritating," liberated city woman, Lily tends to musings about family and divorce that reveal Ephron's moral to the story: divorce can be confusing and painful for kids, but a loving parent can still keep her child on track. Lily learns she can't safeguard her son merely by shielding him from big-city dangers. The road to this hard-earned lesson takes the reader through a novel that sparkles with lively characters. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Well-intentioned but somewhat misguided freelance writer Lily Davis, a consummate New Yorker, abruptly moves to rural Long Island to save her teenage son from himself and his urban peer group. The move seems to go well at first. She finds a house to rent, gets a job, makes a friend, but, as could be predicted, life in the country is not as placid as she had hoped. There is her son with his bizarre hair and a girlfriend who speaks Klingon, the married police officer whom Lily finds extremely attractive, and a body for whom the cause of death is not immediately apparent. She records her reactions in her weekly newspaper column, "Big City Eyes" --the title reflects her continued point of view. Ephron combines drugs, deer, coworkers, and gossip in a frenetic mix that shows country life to be in sharp contrast to Lily's city-dwelling expectations of peace and tranquility. Ultimately, people end up where they belong in this entertaining, if slightly silly, novel that reads like a movie concept. Delia has teamed with her sister, Nora, to write a screenplay based on this story. Danise Hoover

From Kirkus Reviews
Author, screenwriter, and producer Ephron follows her first novel (Hanging Up, 1995, inspiration for the current film starring Diane Keaton) with another frothy family romp, this about a single-mom journalist who moves to a bucolic Long Island shore town to save her incommunicado 15-year-old from the perils of a Manhattan adolescence. Lily Davis knows her son, Sam, is sneaking out to clubs at night, but when she discovers a steak knife in his bureau, she decides its time to get out of Dodge. Settling in Sakonnet Bay, she lands a job on the local paper. Covering a story in which the baby with its head stuck in a pitcher at Claires Collectibles turns out to be a vicious dachshund, shes attracted to the cop who comes to her rescue. When she and Sgt. Tom McKee find themselves in a mansion with a naked woman sprawled across a bed, Lily gets her first clue that Brigadoon has as many issues as she does, and the plot turns into a typical small-town crime story where everyone is suspect. Add to the mix her sons new haircut (shaved except for a tail spouting from the center of his head); his girlfriend, who speaks in the Star Trek language Klingon; and a town divided over the fate of the deer population (hunters are lined up against the Friends of Bambi), and you have the premise for a hilarious if stock fish-out-of-water tale. Can Lily give up a city that can do more for you than a husband or a lover for a place where everyone knows your whereabouts by the dents in your car? The answer lies in her column, Big City Eyes, in which she lampoons the locals, sends cryptic messages about her personal life, and dispels rumors that Sam is a member of the Aryan nation. Good, clean, lighthearted fun with a moral ending. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Out of the ordinary
I would not consider "Big City Eyes" a literary master piece but most of the enjoyable light weight stuff we get everyday, like TV shows we watch religiously each week, are none the less essential to our good times. I do believe that the reviews of this book are accurate and provide the potential reader that this is one for a long plane ride. Lily is a character not far from everyone of us that mentally experiences life. We plug in background music to situations, think about the good old times, and wish life were bigger than it really is. I enjoyed this book because of its difference. At first I was annoyed that it was a simple read but I found myself laughing and having a good time reading it. My next book is "White Teeth" a Zadie Smith novel of a more grandious literary style. I look forward to every new style of writing I encounter. Hope you enjoy "Big City Eyes".

Underwhelming
I have to confess I had higher hopes for "Big City Eyes." I was immediately drawn into the book by Ephron's snappy style and astute and somewhat offbeat observations regarding human nature. But about halfway through the novel, I realized it all seemed familiar, not as original as I had hoped. Lily moves out of Manhattan to save her son, only to realize...what??? That small towns are gossip mills? That bad things happen in small towns? That she can be attracted to a married man? None of this is a big surprise to the reader, especially since it is spelled out in the fly leaf of the novel.

Ultimately, I'm disappointed that the novel didn't chart out a more definite journey of self-discovery for Lily. Instead it skirts around the surface. Perhaps the reason for its superficialness is that its trapped somewhere between a genre mystery and a novel. And as a mystery it fails because we don't really care that much about the victim or the perpetrator.

As a novel, it careens between Lily's tenuous relationship with her son and her equally tenuous relationship with Officer McKee. Neither of these males are exactly likeable or intriguing characters, although we do see something of an emotional breakthrough for the son. Officer McGee is married with children and possibly politically conservative. Thats about all we really know about him. Nonetheless, Lily is inexplicably drawn to him. They shag once or twice, but the affair is over with before its barely begun. The ending suggests to me that Ephron may have a sequel in mind. In of itself, this novel of marginal subplots and unmysterious murder ends with numerous unsatisfying loose ends.

However, I would still read a sequel, in the hope that the story gets better. Lily Davis is a character with potential, and I'd like to give Ephron another chance to really make her shine.

A fun beach book!
Okay. So this book is not high art, but I loved it. Spending a little time in Sakonnet Bay was just the break I needed. The main character --Lily-- seemed so familiar, like an old friend, and then it struck me: I think Harriet the Spy grew up to be Lily Davis. The story is a lightweight mystery--very funny, sweet and bittersweet and Eprhron,as ususual, has given us a bunch of wacky ancillary characters that are written with a great deal of affection. I hope that she'll use Lily and Sam,Deidre and Jane in another book, because I hated to lose them at the close of this one.