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Daum, Meghan ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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THE QUALITY OF LIFE REPORT
Daum, Meghan
2003 6643 ABOUT THE BOOK The Quality of Life Report FROM THE PUBLISHER "New York television reporter Lucinda Trout is in search of greener pastures. Her self-imposed mission: move to the slower-paced, friendly, and vastly more affordable midwestern town of Prairie City, USA. Her search includes but is not limited to: a decently sized apartment with a few aesthetic qualities; a job that is not all about pleasing her conniving, urban terror of a boss; the love of a good man; and, maybe, a dog. And so Lucinda departs with a plan to deliver televised reports to her New York audience about the sweeping landscapes, charming farmsteads, and quirky locals that will constitute her newfound quality of life." "But when Lucinda falls for Mason Clay, the quirkiest local of all, her naivete about the real world leads her down an unexpected path. In an effort to portray her life as a romantic, rural, idyll (in which she takes the role of Sam Shepard's leading lady or "the kind of woman Lyle Lovett might write a song about"), Lucinda moves with Mason into a drafty farmhouse, where she must cope with his children, an ever-growing menagerie of farm animals, and the harshest winter the region has seen in twenty years. Lucinda is so determined to live out her fantasy that not even Mason's radical mood swings and eventual bout with addiction can deter her. In other words - simplicity isn't as simple as it is cracked up to be." Through a series of unexpected turns, help from quarters where she least expects it, and a growing love of a landscape that is undeniably real, Lucinda comes to realize that "quality of life" is much more complicated - and ultimately richer - than she ever imagined. FROM THE CRITICS Dan Wakefield Daum has written a first-rate novel-The Boston Globe The New York Times The Quality of Life Report is effervescent and companionable and may well be written off as chick lit, though it deserves better. Daum's enormous comic gift -- and her ability to use it in the service of fundamentally serious issues -- is an unexpected delight. — Karen Karbo The Los Angeles Times … smart, stylish and sometimes downright hilarious. — Mark Rozzo The Washington Post In The Quality of Life Report, Daum does her best work with little things -- minor scenes feel the most relevant, empty rooms the most populated. Like her heroine, the less interesting Daum is required to be, the more freedom she has to invent her own palatably melancholy universe out of rough edges and false starts. — Heather Havrilesky The New Yorker Daum brings a crisp, wisecracking voice to her novel about Lucinda, a life-style correspondent for a morning television show, who, in search of a more interesting life, leaves New York for Prairie City, a fictional Midwestern town. The "Report" of the title is a series of dispatches on life there which Lucinda pitches to her boss as 'A Year in Provence' meets 'Lake Wobegon Days.' (The boss observes that it's more like "Girl, Interrupted" meets "Deliverance.") Although the New Yorkers here are as predictable as the TV show' reports on bridal-registry etiquette, the people Lucinda meets in Prairie City become real characters, particularly the novel's love interest, a painter whose day job is in a grain elevator. Their relationship gives Lucinda more insight than she might have liked into the lives of some of the women in her adopted town, and leads the novel beyond clichés of city slickers and country bumpkins toward an admirably nuanced view of the American heartland. Read all 8 "From The Critics" > Published at Twenty Five Dollars. Viking Adult 0-670-03213-1 / 9780670032136
Hardcover New New book Jacket New York
Price:
15.75 USD
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