Tuesday Intros - Dorothy Parker Drank Here

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I found this latest book by Ellen Meister at the library. I'd previously read and enjoyed The Other Life and Farewell Dorothy Parker by Meister. Of course, who doesn't love the bon mots of Dorothy

Parker. In her previous Parker novel, and this one, the idea is that Parker haunts the Algonquin Hotel where she and other authors hung out. In this book,the quipping Parker is mixed with a likeable television show assistant producer who's about to lose her job and a washed-up author who is dying of an operable brain tumor because he feels guilty about cheating on his long-ago wife. I'm really enjoying the book.
Here's the intro:

1967
Death was like a bowl of soup.
At least that's how it felt to Dorothy Parker. One minute she was aware of a terrible pain radiating from the middle of her chest, and the next she was floating in a warm, brothy bath, where everything around her hovered at the same temperature as her body. She couldn't tell where she began and the world left off.

I look forward to seeing what everyone else is reading.

Review -- Farewell, Dorothy Parker

Truthfully, I haven't read a lot of Dorothy Parker. I've only read her pithy quotes, but who wouldn't fall in love with those?
"If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you."
or
"This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."
or
"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
Her words are like fine chocolates that shouldn't be gorged on, but instead tasted and savored individually or they could lead to a stomachache.
Author Ellen Meister, in her new book Farewell, Dorothy Parker, brings Parker to life as a mentor from death to her timid character Violet Epps. Violet is a movie critic with big opinions who can't seem to speak up for herself in her own life.
At the beginning, I didn't like Violet very much. She stood in front of a maitre'd and was overlooked without a peep. That bugged me. She didn't have the gumption to break up with her mooching boyfriend. In fact, not very much about Violet was likeable. Luckily, she was immediately plunged into interacting with Dorothy Parker. Violet meets Parker when she's asked to sign the Algonquin Hotel guestbook. Somehow, she ends up taking the guestbook home only to learn that Parker's ghost is attached to it. That's how Dorothy Parker ends up in Violet's house on long-term loan, ready to give advice and prod Violet into having a backbone.
I would have to say the first part of this novel dragged a bit, but then it captured me and I finished it in one afternoon.
Meister, of course, had to channel Dorothy Parker in order to portray her wit, and I think she did quite well. Here's a passage in the book that made me chuckle. Violet is showing the ghost Dorothy Parker how computers work and allowing her to write an email. The Parker character speaks first:
"In my day, cc stood for carbon copy."
"Now it stands for nothing."
"Like your politicians..."

When Violet learns that she can carry the guestbook around allowing the ghost of Dorothy Parker to travel with her, the two of them encounter a neighbor going for a run and Parker asks if Candy, the neighbor, knows of a nearby smokeshop:
Candy blinked. "Smoke shop?" she said again. 
Mrs. Parker shrugged. "Vile habit. I used to say, 'I'll quit when I die,' but it turns out even that was harder than I thought."
Meister imagines a Parker who would banter about her current state -- dead.

An entire novel can't be built around a few clever phrases though, and Meister didn't rely on the presence of Parker alone. Her character was in a situation where if she didn't grow a backbone, she was going to lose things she loved, like her job and the care of her niece. So Parker's appearance was fortuitous in helping the character change her life.
And, in turn, Violet helped Parker face things that she might be avoiding after death, the idea of crossing over to be with loved ones. The novel deals with Parker's painful childhood and whether her mother, who died before she turned five, would love her in the afterlife. Meister could have stayed on the surface and dealt only with the wisecracking Parker, but she dug into some of the true emotions that the larger-than-life woman might have dealt with.
This is definitely a book worth picking up.
I received an ARC from Putnam to review the book and the quotes may change in the final version. The free book didn't slant my review. The book will be available in February and can currently be pre-ordered on Amazon.
I enjoyed this novel and was a little bereft at the end when I had to close the book on the characters.

First Paragraph, Tuesday Teaser -- Farewell, Dorothy Parker

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
Last December, I wrote a blog post about a book that I enjoyed called The Other Life by Ellen Meister. Meister has a new book coming out in February and Putnam sent me an arc to read. I'll let you know if it's as good as the last one.
Here's the intro:

Violet Epps stood before the maitre d' in the lobby lounge of the Algonquin Hotel, waiting to be noticed. She cleared her throat and he looked up, glancing right past her.  

"Who's next?" he said.

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays. Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 17:

And then the particles settled themselves into a recognizable image. Violet blinked. She wasn't just looking at a mass of floating dust particles. She was looking at a pale gray suggestion of a small woman holding a French poodle on her lap. As she continued to stare, the vision got stronger, more vibrant, until it wasn't a vision at all but a real live person.
 

Would you keep reading? I think it would be hard to portray Dorothy Parker. How can anyone else be as witty? As full of bon mots? I'll see how the author did and let you know.

The Other Life -- A Review

I featured The Other Life by Ellen Meister last Tuesday for First Paragraph and Tuesday Teaser. I finished it this morning before the boys got up for school, and I loved it.
When I first read the premise, the main character has a parallel life that is living with the opposite decisions that she made, I thought, "Oh, I love these kinds of books, like Sliding Doors." I did like that movie, but when I think about alternative lives, I have to consider a movie like It's A Wonderful Life and the book A Christmas Carol by Dickens, both of which I don't like. So my opinion on The Other Life was up in the air. I could love it or hate it.
Quinn lives in a New York City suburb with her husband, son and a baby on the way. She knows her parallel life includes the man she broke up with for her current husband. When she finds out that the baby she is carrying has major birth defects, she is tempted to visit that other life, where the decisions are simpler. Also tempting her is the fact that her mother is still alive in that other life.
This is a book that encourages people to think about the past decisions that led them to this spot in their lives and evaluate if they would do the same things again. It deals with marriage, needy men, mother/daughter relationships, motherhood and friendships.
I highly recommend it.

First Paragraph, Teaser Tuesday -- The Other Life

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
Just this morning I picked up this book and decided to read it now that my teaching break has begun.
The Other Life by Ellen Meister has a teaser line on the cover "What if you could return to the road not taken?"
Here's the beginning of Chapter 1:

Quinn Braverman had two secrets she kept from her husband. One was the real reason she chose him over Eugene, her neurotic, self-loathing, semi-famous ex-boyfriend, was to prove her mother wrong. She could have a relationship with a normal, stable man.
The other was that Quinn knew another life existed in which she had made the other choice. The two lives ran in parallel lines, like highways on opposite sides of a mountain. There, on the other side, the Quinn who had stayed with Eugene was speeding through her high-drama, emotionally exhausting, childless urban life. Here, the Quinn who had married Lewis lived in the suburbs of Long Island, drove a Volvo, and was pregnant with her second child.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Here's my teaser from page 172:

Quinn took her husband's hand from her shoulders and wrapped them around her. I promise to never do it again, she thought, and tried to imagine her guilt as vapor that dissipated into the atmosphere.