Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
"Suspicion is the smoke you see everything through that refuses to be lit.", 12 Aug 2009
Feelings of distrust steadily unfold in this intriguing family drama set in the salubrious confines of Upper Westside Manhattan, where the main protagonist Lisa Barkley is forced to encounter the rocky paths of her relationship with her journalist husband Sam, her best friend Deidre and her two adorable daughters Claire and Phoebe and also all of the other people who walk throughout the peripheries of her life. The Barkley's middle-class existence is seemingly comfortable. Claire and Phoebe attend Weston, an exclusive private school which suits the image Lisa has of her life. Until recently Lisa has prided herself on how busy she was even rising to vice president of the PR firm she works at, her accomplishments bringing "a certain thrill, a verification." At some point, however this excitement as begun to wane along with her realization that it might all collapse in an instant - and then there's the worry about money - or lack if it "throwing us into an endless financial free fall with no net beneath us."
At this point, author Emily Listfield sweeps us up into her whirlwind of drama, propelling us through Emily's life and her trials of motherhood, where her job is on the line, and then an ever-tightening knot of anxiety, fear and resentment which takes over as her world falls apart. It all starts with Sam's voice mail, that of a woman's voice, she does not leave a name, but there's an intimacy lacing her tone: "I'm going to be late tonight". As "sweat beads along the back of Lisa neck," the revelation thrusts her into a nightmare of suspicion and distrust. But Lisa also has to contend with the best friend Deirdre, her cataclysmic break-up with Jack, her love from their college days. It is to Deidre that's she offers the sly confession "I think Sam is having an affair," the worlds transforming what was a "whispery suspicion," into something concrete, with its own shape and weight.
Listfield's milieu is not familiar to me - these young accomplished mostly bourgeois, moneyed people with all of their talk and their upwardly mobile pretensions. Yet the author is able to humanize even the most unlikable personalities even as they come across as larger-than-life. There's Deirdre and her dread of an ingrained single-life, her narcotic relationship with fashion photographer Ben Erickson with his opaque heart and his little white lies, and his questionable moral compass; Lisa's potential client David Forrester, with his longish brown hair, financial genius known for his moral relativity. And Frank with the expertly tailored as he drinks martinis in flashy restaurants, treating Lisa like a type of emissary as he tries to remake his relationship with Deidre all the while the sharp coolness of the New York nights bestow a momentary if false illusion of clarity.
While an unexpected murder embeds the novel with a mysterious whodunit feel, especially throughout the last half, Listfield's remarkable story -telling gifts are the real star of the show as her embattled main protagonist finds herself hemmed in all sides. Throughout, Lisa looks for an excuse to lay claim to her husband. Once everything was certain: her job and Sam's fidelity, but the intrinsic netting of her life suddenly becomes flimsy and insubstantial, and everything she had once taken for granted seems up for grabs. Certainly all the painful revelations throw Lisa for a hook, sheets of fury and resentment, shame and embarrassment laying on top of each other. An exercise in the nature of duplicity, Best Intentions is built around strong characters - the professional Manhattan society elite, and wealthy mom's with their spoilt children who seem to constantly shape-shift around Lisa. This book is ultimately about catching someone in the lie and laying it bare, along with the art of exposing the difference between how people present themselves and who they really are. Mike Leonard August 2009.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The first successful 'chick lit' thriller?, 18 May 2009
Best Intentions falls into the `chick lit' category, but is the first book I have read which successfully manages to combine this with a convincing thriller.
The book begins with Lisa, a mother of two teenage girls, living a busy life in New York. Her happy world starts crumbling around her when she suspects her husband of having an affair. To make matters worse her job becomes under threat when the company she works for is taken over by new management.
One of the best things about the book was that I knew who was going to be murdered from the beginning. I think that the author intended this to be the case, as all her marketing makes it very obvious. The murder doesn't occur until about 2/3 of the way through, so for the majority of the book I was searching for clues as to what would provoke violence. This is the only book I've read where the majority of the detective work is done before the actual crime is committed. I was unsure as to whether to name the murder victim here, so I'll leave you to make up your own mind. If you'd like to know who is killed then the book's website lets you know.
The writing is not fluffy, like many books in this genre, but is intelligent and thought provoking. In many ways it reminded me of Lionel Shriver's writing style in The Post-birthday World. The main themes are relationships, trust and parenting. There were a lot of sections where I found myself remembering almost identical experiences:
I turn partially around. "Have a yogurt."
I've already had a yogurt."
I take a deep breath. "All right, One Cookie. Just One." I distrust any mother who says she never bribes her children.
The characters are all well-drawn, and behave realistically, the slight annoyance being that it is all written in the first person (although I have to admit that I got used to this after a few chapters).
The ending is satisfyingly realistic, but unfortunately I don't think it could have been predicted using anything other than pot luck, as all the suspects had equally good motives, and as far as I could tell there were no clues hidden earlier in the text.
Recommended.
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