Le Plus Bel âge (French Edition) (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
The back cover describes the book as a "novel of a startling scope and complexity." The 16 CDs in case also gave a knowing nudge to the description. Christina Moore does a wonderful job of performing this unabridged recording of Joanna Smith Rakoff's novel. Injected even more emotion to the author's words. As well as she did, there were still moments when it was not possible to keep track of who was speaking - simple because there were too many characters. The story starts with the wedding of Lil, a highly educated (scholar), early-twenties New Yorker of upper-middle class. Her friends arrive at the wedding, and are challenged to re-define what they want in life. I felt myself quickly drawn into the story, but began to feel a bit bogged down trying to keep track of each of the characters. The story would also jump to follow a different character at moments of high conflict. One is left wondering what "What happens next?" when the next chapter starts concentrating on a different character, weeks, months, years later in which the "resolutions" is leaked out in relation to current events. The writing is beautiful, and a good story is told, but it leaves a sad feeling. The message seems to be that people lives are never as happy as they seem. This story features characters from Oberlin College (my alma mater), which was fun and reminiscent for me since various buildings on the campus were mentioned. The main action takes place in New York City, one of my favorite haunts, so I was very pleased in terms of locales in the novel. In the story, the characters form a group (very Oberlin-esque) that others (not Oberlin grads) feel excluded from at times. The group is rather elastic and changeable as some members marry, have children, divorce, and navigate from the 20-somethings to the 30-somethings. There is some wonderful character development and the author switches easily from one character's point of view to another. My 3 stars are for some of the illogical pieces of the story, such as a doctor who proposes to a woman because he saw her across the room a year before and liked her hair. He is a psychiatrist who treats his bride's borderline sister; the bride insists that her sister cannot be hospitalized and so the couple buy a 2-family in Brooklyn and live downstairs while the mentally ill sister lives upstairs. The sister is without any income while she hoards objects from flea markets using the sane sister's (and her doctor husband's) money. AND, the marriage works out perfectly and wonderfully... um, really? Other characters were more realistically drawn, such as the woman who marries a filmmaker and lives with their 2 children in an inherited condo that the couple cannot afford to renovate. Her husband is always on the road and she is single-mothering her children. She cannot find other moms to relate to in her neighborhood and gets used to solitude, eventually preferring it. The tragedy toward the end was resolved a little too cleanly, with a wonderful funeral during which all of the dead's past friends, neighbors, professors, and grocery store clerks show up. That was a little too pretty and "tied up with a bow" for my taste. If you like a novel with many characters, coming of age in their 20's, in NYC, figuring out their lives, navigating their futures, read this book; just give the author some poetic license here and there and you'll have a good read.
What do You think about Le Plus Bel âge (French Edition) (2000)?
i enjoyed the coming of age story--an accurate description of the changes in your twenties!
—movieoffice
Another version of the Group; Oberlin style. Not bad for a vacation read.
—stephanieskeete
really deserves 0 stars, but that wasn't an option.
—cinthyanol
