Trouble

I’m at the point in the pregnancy where I have absolutely no energy, and am spending many an hour reading in my new zero-gravity chair (the only place I’m comfy right now!)

Kate Christensen’s Trouble was a completely engrossing way to spend a day. In Trouble, forty-something Manhattanite Josie has an epiphany when she spots her own sexy reflection across the room as she flirts with a stranger at a cocktail party: she has endured her passionless marriage long enough and must end it immediately. She sets the separation in motion the very next day. Meanwhile, she’s asked to spend some time in Mexico City with her best pal Raquel, an aging rock star who is getting slaughtered in the tabloids after sleeping with a celebrity half her age. It turns out the young actor has a pregnant girlfriend, and Raquel is being vilified as an evil cougar on the gossip blogs she obsessively checks every day. Josie’s husband doesn’t want to fight for his marriage, and her indifferent 13-year-old daughter calmly accepts the news of the separation, so Josie hops on a plane to support her pal (and party it up a little).

The women do party it up, and unsurprisingly, Josie meets a man. The book introduces many interesting themes: aging, sexual awakening, the mother-daughter relationship, female friendship, class divisions, the power of online media. Unfortunately, it falls short of its potential, and doesn’t satisfactorily explore any of these themes. Yet Troubleis still an absorbing, evocative book to pass a lazy hazy day.