BOOKISH FRIDAY: “MRS.: A NOVEL”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What a great way to spend a Friday!

Today’s feature is a recent e-book purchase:  Mrs.: A Novel, by Caitlin Macy, an entertaining, sharp-eyed portrayal of privilege and it’s price” –People Magazine

 

 

Beginning:  “Look at you in your fur!  You were so smart to wear it!”

“It was my mother’s.  I never wear it.  I really never do.  But today I just thought, Why not?“

In the cold, the mothers gathered outside the school.  One after another, like children being summoned in a schoolyard game, they came battling off of Park Avenue into the leeward hush of the side street.

***

Friday 56:  Then Gwen’s heart gave a horrible jolt because Philippa’s face went dead with shock.  Curtis looked at Philippa carefully.  “Hey, hey, hey — how’re you doing?”  he said smoothly. (56%).

***

Synopsis:  In the well-heeled milieu of New York’s Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture.

Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa’s single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer whose vast fortune and frank revelations about a penurious upbringing in Spanish Harlem put everyone on alert.

When Gwen’s husband, a heavy-drinking, obsessive prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office, stumbles over the connection between Philippa’s past and the criminal investigation he is pursuing at all costs, this insulated society is forced to confront the rot at its core and the price it has paid to survive into the new millennium.

Macy has written a modern-day HOUSE OF MIRTH, not for the age of railroads and steel but of hedge funds and overnight fortunes, of scorched-earth successes and abiding moral failures. A brilliant portrait of love, betrayal, fate and chance, MRS marries razor-sharp social critique and page-turning propulsion into an unforgettable tapestry of the way we live in the 21st Century.

***

What do you think?  Do the excerpts grab you?

***