Quintessential Quindlen. Varied, flawed characters all; snappy dialogue; perfect observations; familiar themes. I struggled a bit getting sucked into the story, but the writing always held my attention, and then I was just immersed and did not want the story to end. Ms. Quindlen’s writing continues to captivate me, ever since the days of her New York Times column, “About New York” in the early 1980s, when I was a young mother at home with two sons in the suburbs. Fast forward to 1997. I am at the end of my second year of law school, with my oldest son about to graduate high school. Ms. Quindlen is the graduation speaker at Rutgers Law School-Newark for some of my friends and colleagues on the law journal the year ahead of me, and I attend. Fast forward to 2018; my three sons are grown and on their own, but I still feel the essential tug of Ms. Quindlen’s writing, those “Yes! Yes! Yes!” moments of synchronicity. As I said at the beginning, quintessential Quindlen. ( )

This book is easy to read and creates a pretty vivid portrait of the kind of stereotypical New Yorkers that non New Yorkers hate.

This story is about one particular block in Manhattan and the people who live there. They are rich, pretentious and seem to think they are better than everyone in every possible way - even better than all the other people on the block. I seriously took a strong dislike to everyone in the whole book but especially our protagonist Nora who was just insufferable. I feel like I lived through the midlife crisis of Nora and her husband and I’m left thinking THANK GOD I don’t spend my life around people like them.

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Just couldn’t get interested in the characters or the plot. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the parking lot or the neighbors. Disappointing. ( )

I can't say I was thrilled with the book. I started with the eBook, and then was able to get a copy of the audiobook (the reader was good).
The book was ok, but seemed to have so many petty issues I didn't really care about. The last section where she talked about the things she learned was what changed it to 3 stars. ( )

Not my favorite Anna Quindlen, but it had some good moments, especially in Nora's reflections on New York City. The characters didn't feel all that fleshed out, though, and I didn't find even the ones I was supposed to connect with sympathetic very often. ( )