Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman

Book Overview

In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman's passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400095131
• ISBN13: 9781400095131
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Witty, wise, and well worth the read!

I'm so glad I was persuaded by the positive reviews here and gave this book a chance. It is so refreshing to read a book in which parenthood is neither exalted nor parodied. The main character is smart, sarcastic, and sympathetic --I even grew fond of the annoying, precocious five-year-old. And you have to love the depictions of the Upper-East-Side moms. The author also succeeds at capturing the anger and despair that accompanies profound loss. I wept, and also laughed out loud. The novel far exceeded my expectations.

One of the Best in Years: Superb, Sharply- Drawn Family Drama

Ayelet Waldman has penned an extraordinary family drama in Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. If I could give this sharply-realized novel ten stars, I would. The characters and circumstances in Love and Other Impossible Pursuits are complex. The heroine, Emilia Greenleaf Woolf, has stolen her husband from his wife and son, only to reap tragedy at the SIDS death of their two-day-old daughter. But is Emilia's sorrow a just outcome for her role in the demise of her husband's first marriage? Perhaps not: Emilia's passion for her husband is as fierce as his first wife's distaste for his physical presence. But perhaps so: Emilia's difficulty in adapting to her five-year-old stepson is a major failing and Emilia herself is headstrong and willful. But perhaps not: William, Emilia's stepson, is a precocious, brilliant and difficult child who would challenge any parent, much less a bereaved stepmother. It is the complexity of Waldman's characters and narrative that makes Love and Other Impossible Pursuits such a delight. Life is multi-faceted and many-hued and Waldman delivers a narrative that refuses to provide easy answers. The characters and plotting of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits are satisfying, multi-dimensional and worth savoring. Truly an exceptional read: one of the best family novels in years. One more observation: this book would make a remarkable film. Think Kramer v. Kramer and Ordinary People. I hope that the film rights are sold and that Ms. Waldman has a hand in the screenplay.

This book is compelling.

I couldn't put it down. This hasn't been the case since "The Scret Life of Bees." I don't usually review books but I would like to recommend this one because this author is receiving some unjustly low marks.

Touching and believable

Dismiss all the haters in here who judge Ayelet and not her book (and who are all a bunch of jealous nutcases, in my opinion), and read this lovely book. You can take the time, if you like, to read the reviews that address the book itself, and not someone's romantic delusion that Michael Chabon will leave his supposedly plain wife for some Marin hausfrau who adores and idolizes him (the way Emilia does Jack, in this novel, funnily enough), but in the end, I hope you'll buy this book, or at least check it out from your local library -- they miss you! Ayelet has a great ear for dialogue, both internal and external, and she doesn't shy away from the ugly underbelly of step-parenting, and maternity itself. This is true in her non-fiction writing as well as her novels, whether the very entertaining Juliet Applebaum series or her "harder" novels. Considering that (in all frankness) I couldn't *stand* Daughter's Keeper (too preachy, too something, I just hated it, and was shocked that I did because I love AW's writing soooo much), I was somewhat nervous to pick Love and Other Impossible Pursuits up, but I'm SO glad I did, and I'm sure you will be, too, if you can tune out the cynical whining voices of those who don't deem Ayelet worthy or imagine she's some unfulfilled post-feminist nightmare. p.s. To the hysterical chorus of complainers about her "suicidal musings" on her late blog, I'd just like to say "QUIET!" Ayelet has bipolar disorder, you inaccurate reporters, and was having post-partum difficulties with her medication, which she realized and had adjusted -- it's not like she's some lunatic!!!

polarizing writer/polarizing book

Some reviewers have objected to the character of Emilia, finding her to be too much of a prickly pear, her treatment of William cold. And yet it is this same prickliness that I find to be one of the novels saving graces, from an artistic viewpoint. If Ms. Waldman had drawn Emilia as being a cupcake of lovability, the story of a woman trying to find her way back to life after the loss of a baby would be nearly impossible to read. As it is, we really don't like Emilia in the beginning, and that's a good thing. And as the story progresses, Ms. Waldman does one of the wonderful novelist/magician tricks: she shifts the mirrors. The reader sees that Jack's first wife, Caroline, is cold to the core; that William can be difficult and hurtful, even if Emilia's treatment of him is not all we would want it to be; that Emilia does indeed come with her own baggage from a less-than-perfect childhood. And then there are those magnificent descriptions of Central Park... People who dismiss this book - either because of its subject matter or because it's been characterized by the NYT as chick-lit or because it has been written by the polarizing Ms. Waldman - are only doing themselves a disservice. Because Ms. Waldman hasn't written a good novel, she's written a great novel, about how bad things sometimes happen to imperfect people, about pain and redemption, about Love & Other Impossible Pursuits. I envy her having written this novel.