Deborah Copaken Kogan’s third book is juicy, with a big helping of smart. The novel is built on a scaffolding of excerpts from the red book, a class report of self-written snippets by Harvard alums sketching out their previous five years. It’s a bit of a gambit, but an effective one, as it allows Kogan to quickly introduce her characters, and their histories.
In the first red book pages, we learn that four ex-roommates are preparing to return to Cambridge for their twentieth reunion. They will arrive from disparate parts of the world and in various states of motherhood, daughterhood, career, marriage, and emotional condition.
The plot takes off with sirens blaring, literally, when one alumna, Addison, a half-hearted artist with a trust fund and three disaffected children, is arrested for failing to pay two-decade old parking tickets. The plot quickly thickens as her three ex-roommates — the wife of an aging Hollywood director, a Paris-based journalist, and a recently-unemployed Lehmann Brothers executive — decide how (and also because of some inevitable hard feelings, whether) to pay Addison’s fines, which have accrued to well over $100,000.
Amid the rollicking action, the real joy of the book comes from the characters’ musings. The plot requires that each protagonist ask the types of questions we all consider as we turn the corner on half a life: Am I living up to my potential? Am I living the life I want to live? Am I loved? Do I love? Learning how Kogan answers for each character — and those parts of each character we see in ourselves — will keep you up half the night reading, and then leave you wishing there were more.
Fiction
The Red Book
- Review
June 21, 2012
Discussion Questions
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