Product Description

BROOKLYN'S FAMED PARK SLOPE neighborhood has it all: sprawling, majestic Prospect Park; acclaimed public schools; historic brownstones; and progressive values. Among bohemian bourgeois breeders, claiming a stake in Park Slope has become a competitive sport.

In the park, at the coffee shops, and on the playgrounds of the neighborhood, four women's lives come together during one long, hot Brooklyn summer. Melora Leigh, a two-time Oscar-winning actress, frustrated with her career and the pressures of raising her adopted toddler, feels the seductive pull of kleptomania; Rebecca Rose, missing the robust sex life of her pre-motherhood days, begins a dangerous flirtation with a handsome neighborhood celebrity; Lizzie O'Donnell, a former lesbian (or "hasbian"), wonders why she is still drawn to women in spite of her sexy husband and adorable baby; and Karen Bryan Shapiro finds herself consumed by two powerful obsessions: her four-year-old son's well-being and snagging the ultimate three-bedroom apartment in a wellmaintained, P.S. 321-zoned co-op building. As the women's paths intertwine (and sometimes collide), each must struggle to keep her man, her sanity...and her playdates.

From the perennially hot author and columnist Amy Sohn comes a smart, sexy, satirical peek into the bedrooms and hearts of Prospect Park West.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56530 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416577638
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Former New York magazine Mating columnist Sohn zeroes in on the more-fertile-than-thou crowd in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood in her vinegary latest (after My Old Man). Like a Grand Hotel for the yuppie set, the lives of moody, angry, dissatisfied mommies intersect on the playgrounds and co-ops of their overpriced hood. Among them, Lizzie, whose lesbian proclivities mask her loneliness; Rebecca, whose libidoless spouse prefers his role as dad over husband; Karen, a social-climbing conniver; and Melora, a former Manhattanite whose psychiatric maladies are as pathetic as they are numerous. The gals in this comedy of bad manners are burned out, bitchy and beyond salvation as they maneuver to be noticed and loved. Meanwhile, there's more name-dropping than in an edition of Page Six, and while Sohn is obviously intent on skewering the annoying urban mommy stereotype, 400 pages is a stretch for material that's been blogged to death. There are moments of brutal honesty, but they're far too few to allow readers to muster an ounce of sympathy for a crew of caricatures so broadly drawn and sadly conceived. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Amy Sohn's new novel makes Desperate Housewives look like amateur hour. I started blushing on the first page and didn't ever stop." -- LAUREN WEISBERGER, author of Chasing Harry Winston and The Devil Wears Prada

"I could not put down Amy Sohn's Prospect Park West. It's hilarious and juicy, filled with Tom Wolfe-like depictions of America today. It will appeal to everyone: hipsters, non-hipsters, men, women, Brooklynites, non-Brooklynites, straight people, gay people, and hasbians (i.e. former lesbians -- one of the many words I learned in Sohn's book)." -- A. J. JACOBS, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All

"In Prospect Park West, we follow four Brooklyn moms as they deal with obsessions, neuroses, sexual confusion, and oh, yes, children. This novel is Amy Sohn at her best -- dishy, sexy, smart, and provocative." -- GIGI LEVANGIE GRAZER, New York Times bestselling author of The Starter Wife and Queen Takes King

"I've lived in Amy Sohn's Brooklyn for nineteen years. Or so I used to think. How on earth did I miss the frenzy of thirty-something MILFs adulterously running amok?" -- KURT ANDERSEN, author of Heyday

"Sohn is the ultimate New York City girl...(She) weaves each individual story together beautifully.... Sure to appeal to fans of sophisticated chick and mommy lit, this is just too much fun, and the pages turn like the wind. Bring on a sequel!"-- Library Journal (starred review)

"There is an undeniable fascination in seeing [the characters'] lives unfold.... Sohn will attract many new followers."-- Booklist

"Sohn weaves (the) stories together to create what could be described as the perfect beach book."-- Boston Globe

"Darkly comedic."-- New York Post Page Six

About the Author
Amy Sohn is the author of the novels Prospect Park West, My Old Man and Run Catch Kiss. She has also written for New York, The New York Times, The Nation, and Harper's Bazaar. She has written television pilots for such networks as HBO, Fox, and ABC.  She lives in Brooklyn. Visit her at www.AmySohn.com.

Customer Reviews

sexy, trashy fun.....
If you live in Park Slope (and yes, I do) then this novel is a must read. You'll recognize several of the Park Slope 'types' which Sohn captures darn-near perfectly. The nabe's longtime institution -- the Park Slope Coop -- is held up to ridicule but it probably deserves it (I'm not a member.) The novel tells the story of four women struggling with life and child care issues and it's delicious fun.

The book has come in for criticism by some who say it does not highlight the nabe's good points and exaggerates the angst of stay at home mothers but, hey, it's not a documentary -- it's fiction! If people did not love Park Slope, they wouldn't focus on it so much (that means you -- NY Times writers). It's a great place to live, and if we can't laugh at ourselves, well, then we will truly become those characters that Sohn is writing about.

This ain't literature but so what? Good commercial fiction.

Peyton Place or Park Slope?
Caveat: I do not live in Park Slope, although I live in NYC and my boyfriend and I joke about moving there should we ever decide to have kids. After this book, I'll have to think twice about it.

What is the book about? It offers a few months in the lives of a group of Park Slope Parents, specifically focusing on 4 married women (a hypersexualized everywoman, an overeager wannabe status climber, a former lesbian currently married to a black man, and a famous actress). Through the months their lives are entangled in myriad scandalous ways. Some of the characters are stronger than others, and each of the characters has weak points. The book's weak points are the times when her characters are no longer relate-able or veer into satire. The book never veers entirely into satire, but it comes dangerously close. I was less fond of the actress, who never felt more than two-dimensional, and the overeager wannabe, whose desperation (and the actions it drove her to) never felt fully believable.

Most of the broad caricatures Sohn paints of the people, the places, and the attitudes are spot-on, and the book feels very current in its treatment of the area (in other words, she acknowledges the financial crisis, for instance, and doesn't just let her characters buy ridiculously expensive houses and clothes and strollers without a second thought, as though it were still the mid-90s). She does do an excellent job of conveying how a neighborhood in New York - the largest city in the US - can still feel suffocatingly incestuous. Sohn is obviously in her element, intimately familiar with the setting.

The book is juicy and salacious, for sure. Parts of it were downright dirty - not unrealistically dirty, but frank. I actually giggled and felt naughty reading it on the subway. It's incredibly refreshing that Sohn is so willing and able to write candidly about sex. Real sex before marriage, real sex after babies, and real desires of married people, whether with or without their partners.

Great reading...
Last April, 2008, I reviewed Meg Wolitzer's then-new novel, The Ten Year Nap. I gave it two stars, saying it was filled with whiny, wealthy Upper East Side and Upper West Side 30-something married women, all of whom should be stood in line, slapped-upside-the-head in order, and told, "stop whining already and go back to work!". I received a few comments on the review, saying, basically, "thanks for writing what I was thinking!"

The characters in Amy Sohn's new novel are sort of the same whiny women, living in Brooklyn's trendy Park Slope area in her book, but somehow Sohn gives her characters - most of whom are as unlikable as the ones in Wolitzer's novel - more nuanced, real-life depictions. I may not have "liked" most of the characters, but I certainly cared enough to keep reading to find out what happens to them. And that, I suppose, is one sign of a well-written story.

"Prospect Park West" is not conventional "chick-lit". It's much, much better. I didn't read it thinking about what actor I supposed the author had in mind to play what character when/if the book was turned into a screenplay. That, too, is another sign of a well-written book.