Jetsetters
Amanda Eyre Ward, 2020
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399181894
Summary
When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the Become a Jetsetter contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children:
Lee—an almost-famous actress;
Cord—a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can’t seem to find a partner;
Regan—a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday.
Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them.
When she wins the contest, the family packs their baggage—both literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso.
As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.
Can four lost adults find the peace they’ve been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together?
In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, The Jetsetters is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Raised—Rye, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Williams College; M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Amanda Eyre Ward is the author of seven novels, including How to Be Lost (2005), Close Your Eyes (2011), The Same Sky (2015), and The Nearness of You (2017). Her most recent is The Jetsetters (2020). She has also published a collection of short stories, Love Stories in This Town (2009).
Ward has lived, worked, and studied in such far-flung places as Montana and Greece… Egypt and Maine… South Africa and Cape Cod. She is now settled in Austin, Texas, where she lives with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[Amanda] Ward reveals she has a way with humor.… The author’s eye for forced fun is exquisite.… There is a real poignancy in this novel, as wounded characters struggle to regain childhood loyalties. Ward nails how family expeditions are ruined and saved, over and over again, by fleeting moments of connection and the consensus to survive without killing one another.
Nre York Times Book Review
[T]he Perkins’ desperate attempts to both keep up appearances and tell their truths are interrupted by…mandatory cruise-ship fun. [D]ysfunctions run deep, and each plot twist threatens to sink their sanity, resulting in a funny, moving tale of the complications of familial love.
Booklist
Author Ward… has created a complex story that explores the tragedies and long-term effects of withheld love, verbal abuse, alcoholism, and depression…. Open, optimistic, caring, romantic, and thoughtful Giovanni—Cord’s fiance—is a highlight of the book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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