Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Wow. I so looked forward to this book and was SO disappointed! Wolitzer desperately needed an editor to cut through the strangling, exhausting exposition and give this narrative some pace! She has four stories spinning out at once that do, obviously, intersect, but each one feels, oddly, both truncated and excessive. The same stories are told again and again, but not in some intriguing Rashomonesque way -- simply repeated by other characters. The strangest lacuna in the book is the fact that there is no real relationship between Greer and her "mentor" Faith Frank; I can count on one hand the times they are actually in the same room! This is a novel more about anxiety of influence than female mentorship, and is curiously dated for a novel touted to be relevant in the current climate.