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Friday, July 24, 2009
title: Best Intentions
author: Emily Listfield
genre: fiction
pages: 338
published: 2009
first line: I lie in bed watching the numbers on the digital alarm click in slow motion to 6:00am, 6:01.
rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars
Lisa, in her late thirties, is a working mom of two daughters in Manhattan. She and Sam, her husband of 15 years are able to send thier children to elite Upper East Side private schools. As Lisa is getting the kids ready for the first day of school, she thinks about how distant her husband has been lately. She checks her husbands voicemail and hears a woman telling him to meet her 'same time, same place'. And later on she awakens past midnight to find her husband whispering on his cell phone to someone. She confonts him and he makes an excuse about it being a coworker he needed to talk to.
As the story unfolds, there are just too many suspicious incidents for Lisa to be able to trust Sam. She talks to her best friend Dierdra about her suspicions, but Dierdra tells Lisa she's over reacting.
Without giving away too much, Dierdra herself has a lot going on in her life and the book centers around that as well.
I could relate to Lisa and how she describes her children and motherhood. She mentions how her children are growing up now and want to wear designer clothes and hang out with the in crowd.
"You have to get up sweetie," I whisper as I run my fingers under the blanket and tickle her, her body at least nominally still mine. The softness of her neck, her arms makes the walls of my heart constrict. No one really tells you how much it is like falling in love over and over, how physical and encompassing it will be. Or that you will never feel completely safe and relaxed again.
I really enjoyed reading Best Intentions. Once the story took off, I could not put this book down. I liked that the plot came undone layer by layer. Just when I thought one thing about a character, something else would happen and I found myself with a totally different opinion about them. There were several characters introduced into the storyline, and it all read smoothly. As the plot unfolded it just kept getting better.
The writing was excellent. I found myself drawn into this book, I lived inside it for a little bit. It's a book about marriage, friendship, motherhood and betrayal with a bit of a mystery as well.
Here's a few passages that really stood out:
There is a dividing line, a moment when you realize that you cannot make everything better, kiss every hurt away. I don't know who that realization leaves more bereft, parent or child. Once passed though, it is impossible to return to the time before love's limitations have been rendered so painfully blatant, no matter how much you might long to.
This is what you do: You pretend that things are normal. Long past the point of rationality, you keep on pretending. It is the only way to keep moving, to get through the day with any shred of sanity. You pretend there is not a black hole in the center of your existence. But you know all the while there will come a time when that is no longer possible.
Suspicion crackles and pulls, nags and infiltrates, it coils around your brain, distorting your perceptions, it is the smoke you see everything through that refuses to lift. But a lie, hard and indisputable, freezes in your lungs, its ince spreading through your pores, chilling every synapse; a lie once discovered paralyzes you.
The past is never really over. Our interpretation of it may shift like a kaleidescope, it may inform us or lead us astray, it may bring comfort or delusion, an excuse to hate or a reason to love. Some of us race too quickly to try to escape it, some of us cling so tightly it blinds us to the present. But one way or another, it is always with us.
visit the authors website here: http://emilylistfield.com/
