Karolina Waclawiak

Do not be deceived by the happy pool and float toys on the cover of Karolina Waclawiak's "The Invaders" -- this is no mindless beach read. Waclawiak has delivered an honest, scathing (and depressing) look at class, status, and race in wealthy Connecticut beach town -- a town "far away enough from New York to feel like we were in a different world, but close enough to have successful commuter husbands."

The story has two narrators: Cheryl and Teddy.

40-something Cheryl, Jeffrey's second wife, is losing her "trophy wife" status as she ages. She doesn't come from the right kind of background to have ever made a connection with any of the country-club wives, and her own family has written her off as a phony. Her husband is mostly absent -- physically and emotionally -- and having always relied on her appearance, she doesn't know what to do: "We were now transitioning between desirable and undesirable -- that sad moment when a woman realized that absolutely no man is looking at her, not even a passing glance. It made us all paralyzed with fear."

Jeffrey's son, Teddy, has led a life of absolute privilege and knows this privilege earns him the right to coast: "I had a leg up and that made it easier to slack off. I didn't have to work at the feverish pace that new guys worked when they came from nothing. I knew I was lucky. When my father used to take me to his office, I could pick them out. They worked like it meant something and never took vacations. They were trying to surpass their numbers...The guys like me, who came from where I come from, had a little bit of a wrinkle in their shirts, and sometimes decided Top-Siders counted as proper office attire. Those were my people." When we meet him he's strung out on drugs and has just gotten kicked out of Dartmouth. No matter, his father is getting him hooked up with a job.

Everything continues its downhill spiral in "The Invaders" as the people in the neighborhood decide to build a fence around the beach after a few Latino fishermen are seen fishing on the rocks; an attack in the woods leaves the neighborhood frightened; and a hurricane threatens the coast.

Thank you to NetGalley and Regan Arts for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

… (altro)

This was our script, and it soon spiraled into familiar territory, which ended in his sleeping on the couch and my staring at the ceiling alone in our bedroom. My first instinct was usually to fix, to make him happy, to take it back, and also to berate myself quietly for being a broken person who could not be a productive part of a unit. But this time I didn't do any of those things.

Evelyn is newly unemployed and her marriage is dying. She spends her free time on-line, reading articles and message boards about grief. She also trains to be a grief counselor, helping people and their loved ones through assisted suicide. She's not sure why she feels compelled to pre-grieve when she's never had a family member die. As she drives around greater Los Angeles, learning to help people die and remembering events from her marriage and her childhood, she feels like she's just drifting, but really she's moving forward.

This is a thoughtful, quiet novel that seems to be spinning its wheels for much of the novel, until all the pieces fall into place. Evelyn seems like she's going to start careening from disaster to disaster, when what's happening is that she's figuring out how to live. This novel snuck up on me, taking its time before pulling me entirely into Evelyn's world.… (altro)