Good Eggs
by Rebecca Hardiman
GENRE: Contemporary Fiction, Humor, Lighthearted
Three generations of the Dublin Family are led by a shoplifting matriarch. Her son and granddaughter face their own challenges, while all three face the path to find someone who cares. This is a humorous drama-turned caper where nothing is at it seems.
Booklist
In her poignant and often hilarious family-drama-turned-caper debut, Hardiman, with a light tip of the hat to James Joyce’s Dubliners, masterfully inhabits the lives of three generations of the Dublin Gogarty family. The widowed matriarch, Millie, 83, is a kleptomaniac with idiosyncrasies and personality to spare. On the poignancy spectrum, she is painfully aware and panicked by time passing. Her son, Kevin, a 50-year-old, professionally obsolete, unemployed celebrity-rag writer, is a stay-at-home father of four. He feels and fights time’s passing, too. His oldest daughter, Aideen, 15, is a sullen handful whom he humorously pegs as “The Troubles.” Kevin and his often-absent wife decide in exasperation to send Aideen to a private boarding school they can’t afford. Escapades ensue as the tables turn on Millie’s filching ways, Kevin steps to the edge of unfaithfulness, and Aideen goes on the run after a prank gone wrong. Each of the three is lonely and on their own odyssey to find someone who cares. With catch-your-breath-or-pause-for-a-think prose, the sprightly plot is deepened by explorations of the human condition—first love for Aideen, regret and failure for Kevin, and Millie’s awareness of an ever-swelling never-again list. Hardiman’s final, almost Leprechaunish touch, is deftly satisfying. -- Mary Ellen Prindiville (Reviewed March 2021)
Publisher's Weekly
Hardiman’s rollicking debut dives into the stories of a good-hearted but mischievous Dublin family. Millie Gogarty, an 83-year-old widow drawn to petty theft, “seems to have so little control over her slippery fingers,” as well as over her tongue. Her long-suffering son, Kevin, 50, has been out of work for two decades. Kevin and his wife, Grace, have four children, including the rebellious 16-year-old Aideen, who deliberately smashes her sister’s mirror (“no regrets there”), steals money from Grace, and is about to be shipped off against her will to a boarding school. When Millie is caught shoplifting again, Kevin arranges for a caretaker, an American named Sylvia Phenning, to keep an eye on her. Millie objects, but ends up getting along so well with Sylvia that Millie lends her money to pay for her nephew’s surgery in the U.S. However, in this hilarious, zippy novel, nothing is as it seems. While some of Millie’s escapades are so exaggerated that they move into slapstick territory, the prose is consistently sharp, as is the Gogartys’ hilarious banter. Full of surprises, Hardiman’s endearing novel stands out for its brilliant insight into the mixed blessings of family bonds. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed 11/30/2020) (Publishers Weekly, vol 267, issue 48, p)
Cobble Hill
by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Welcome to Cobble Hill.
In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere.
A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to capable, indefatigable Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehose full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. She remains…elusive. Throw in two hormonal teenagers, a ten-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn.
The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise
by Colleen Oakley
Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it.
One slip on the rug. That’s all it took for Louise Wilt’s daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Bottom line: Louise wants a caretaker even less than Tanner wants to be one.
The two start off their living arrangement happily ignoring each other until Tanner starts to notice things—weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on the suspect of one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history who looks eerily like Louise? And why does Louise suddenly appear in her room, with a packed bag at 1 a.m. insisting that they leave town immediately?
Thus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who—if they can outrun the mistakes of their past—might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.
The Jetsetters
by Amanda Eyre Ward
Winning the grand prize in an essay contest, a single mother reunites her estranged adult children on a 10-day cruise while confronting long-buried secrets from their dysfunctional shared past.
