June 15, 2005

Beach Reads

Put away Brazelton & Spock, The World is Flat, and Freakonomics – whatever your conscience is telling you that you should be reading now. It's time for some summer fluff, the lying-on-the-beach, flying-on-the-plane, napping-by-the-pool (or stealing-half-an-hour-while-Junior-naps) kind of book. However you manage it, the best of the season's lighter fare usually features a tempting cocktail of romance, gossip and revenge. Throw in a riff on modern over-the-top mommy culture and you've got a real corker on your hands.

Making It Up As I Go Along, a first novel by journalist Maria Lennon out today, pits Saffron Roch in the classic dilemma between high-powered international career and late-in-the-game motherhood. She is a 38-year-old correspondent based in Sierra Leone when she finds herself pregnant by her egotistical (and cheating) surgeon-boyfriend. Lured by the prospect of a large inheritance, Saffron decides to pack it up – career, relationship, everything she thought was her life – and head home, trading war-torn Africa for the trenches of motherhood in La La land. As the story (and the unexpected turns of her new life) unfold, Saffron's previous existence lingers in the back of her mind. Amidst the fight to claim what is hers, and nurture what she has created – even in her newfound mommy-comrades – she discovers a depth of experience she once hopped the globe for.

Good stuff, right? Implausible plots are what great fluff is all about, and this book certainly fits the bill. It may be fiction, but there's something in here that just about every woman and mom (dipping toes in the deep end or sneaking off for a few quiet minutes alone) can relate to.

Pass the Coppertone.

Available online at randomhouse.com.