Summary and Reviews of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman
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  • Critics' Consensus (8):
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  • First Published:
  • Jan 26, 2006, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2007, 352 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

With wry candor and tender humor, Ayelet Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what.

With wry candor and tender humor, acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what.

For Emilia Greenleaf, life is by turns a comedy of errors and an emotional minefield. Yes, she's a Harvard Law grad who married her soul mate. Yes, they live in elegant comfort on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But with her one-and-only, Jack, came a stepson—a know-it-all preschooler named William who has become her number one responsibility every Wednesday afternoon. With William, Emilia encounters a number of impossible pursuits—such as the pursuit of cab drivers who speed away when they see William's industrial-strength car seat and the pursuit of lactose-free, strawberry-flavored, patisserie-quality cupcakes, despite the fact that William's allergy is a figment of his over-protective mother's imagination.

As much as Emilia wants to find common ground with William, she becomes completely preoccupied when she loses her newborn daughter. After this, the sight of any child brings her to tears, and Wednesdays with William are almost impossible. When his unceasing questions turn to the baby's death, Emilia is at a total loss. Doesn't anyone understand that self-pity is a full-time job? Ironically, it is only through her blundering attempts to bond with William that she finally heals herself and learns what family really means.

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Reviews

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How should the reader side? How much sympathy should we have for Emilia? How much hurt is it acceptable for her to inflict in her pain, and on who? ... At the end of this heartfelt and well-paced novel nothing tangible has changed; Emilia still misses Isabel, still finds William's questions trying, still finds it a challenge to cope with the ex-wife; but she has survived and grown through her grief, having been transformed into someone who can appreciate the "accidental beauty" of life in both the good and bad moments...continued

Full Review (342 words)

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

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Beyond the Book



Ayelet Waldman

Once a year for the last five years, former public defender Ayelet Waldman has turned out a volume in her Mommy Track mystery series, starring Juliet Applebaum, ex-public defender and "self-employed mother". In mystery genre terms the Mommy Track books are best described as 'cozies' (mysteries with low body counts, with the murders usually committed off stage - or at least not graphically described!).

However, in 2003 she broke the mold and published Daughter's Keeper, a politically charged novel about a woman's battle with the American legal system's inflexible drug laws; and returned in 2006 with Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. In parallel to her books she's also an outspoken blogger and has written a ...

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