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The Red Book Deborah Copaken Kogan 9781401340827 Books

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The Red Book Deborah Copaken Kogan 9781401340827 Books

This is neither a good nor a bad book
It's somewhere between. I liked the characters,
and the development of these characters. However
there were too many people to keep straight. Also, the
format of the novel was awkward. The main characters were
interesting people. The written conversation was believable
and well done. I read it all but occasionally felt it was
labor. Other times I read eagerly to see what was happening.
The whole book covers 5 years, and deals with close friends.
The timeline is built around Harvard's 5 year reunions.


Tags : The Red Book [Deborah Copaken Kogan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Big Chill meets The Group in Deborah Copaken Kogan’s wry, lively, and irresistible new novel about a once-close circle of friends at their twentieth college reunion. Clover,Deborah Copaken Kogan,The Red Book,Voice,1401340822,Contemporary Women,Class reunions;Fiction.,Friendship;Fiction.,AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY FICTION,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,Class reunions,FICTION Family Life General,FICTION Women,Family Life,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Contemporary Women,Fiction Family Life,Fiction General,Fiction-Coming of Age,Friendship,GENERAL,General Adult,Literary,United States

The Red Book Deborah Copaken Kogan 9781401340827 Books Reviews

Excellent, fun, smart novel. Deborah Kogan's story of the lives and life changes of a bunch of Harvard classmates uses a stock plot device to depict the complications, happiness and challenges of modern life for smart women. The classmates are female, some have children, some have husbands, all have personal struggles with careers, children, men, life. The author has a felicitous way with anecdotes, and the hilarious truthes about raising smart urban children.
Entertaining, and you won't feel guilty reading it. Kind of an update of The Group.
I found this book captivating in its depiction of at least 4 major characters who are meeting at their 20th reunion at Harvard.

Felt they were alive women who I could call friends. Their love lives, children, and financial situations were so relevant to
our current world.

This novel has depth and breadth to it. There is plenty of heartbreak and loss and happily lots of new found freedom and
new loves generated by the losses.

I especially loved Mia and Addison for their gusto and diametrically opposed approaches to their lives. I came to truly care for
Jane and Clover, who were not as fully developed. Jonathan was a man who I think I may have been married to once.

Excellent dialogue throughout and a fine sense of humor by the author. Read on .
As I read this just-on-the-edge-of-summer-reader beach fare. I was helping plan my 65th class reunion at another Ivy League college, which I attended when it was all male. I reflected on the differences between my old timer colleagues and these four much younger (but not college age) women at their "younger" reunion. Death, disaster, depression, dishonesty, division and the like were galloping like the Four Horsemen through planned events and unplanned moments when the tears and sneers departed, sometimes "for the children's sake" and sometimes when the smiles couldn't help breaking through. Even at a fictional Radcliffe in a fictional Cambridge, there are real moral and social lessons to be read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested to advantage, on a beach or around a kitchen table. I was totally absorbed in this slice of alumnae life.
Back in the 1980s, everything seemed possible. Even inevitable...for those young hopefuls attending Harvard.

And now, twenty years later, their reunion looms under a totally different kind of sky, with a collapsed economy and a bleak future hovering like a dark cloud of gloom.

The Red Book is the go-to place to find out what's happening with the graduates, and each fall before reunion year, it appears, ready for the alumni to fill in the blanks and share tidbits of their lives.

Mia, Clover, Addison, and Jane are all planning to attend and can't wait to catch up with each other. Each of them has secrets and parts of their lives they might not share with even their closest friends. But they are eager to connect again.

During the weekend, we see each of these characters, along with some of those secrets, unfold and reveal more than we expected to find.

What will happen to change everything about their lives in just one weekend? Will Addison finally discover what her heart really wants? Will Mia find the one true thing she loves? Will Jane put the past to rest and finally forgive those who have betrayed her? And what about Clover, raised on a commune and missing vital bits of convention that others have? Will she give in to the pull of the past?

I like this excerpt, in Mia's husband Jonathan's voice, that seems to capture the times

"...Was it really only a year and a half ago? Jesus, he thinks. How quickly the whole thing can tailspin. One minute you're flying high, full speed ahead, the next a pocket of air catches your wing just as a lightning storm hits. He feels his chest tightening at the mere thought of it...."

As the weekend comes to a close, we leave the characters. But then the author gives us a look at five years ahead, so we can see what happened to these characters after. I loved this part, because I had become so attached to them and didn't want to let them go. Not without some closure. Wonderful read that earned five stars from me.
I'm surprised by the number of reviewers who don't like this book - I thought it was terrific and really enjoyed it. It's sort of a cross between The Big Chill and Mary McCarthy's The Group. A group of four roommates from Harvard get together for a reunion weekend and we see what happens. In between, we're given their back stories and glimpses into the future. I'm wondering if some readers are too young to appreciate what happens to people 20 years after college, and how life doesn't always turn out the way we expect, even for Harvard grads. It resonated with me because I could understand the characters' feelings quite well, even if I don't share their high-expense lifestyles, especially stay-at-home mom Mia. I can also understand the feeling of "if not now, when" that a few of the characters experience during their weekend - the feeling you get around age 40 that if you aren't happy with some aspect of your life, you'd better get on it and fix it before much more time passes. This is a very well-written book that I think many readers would enjoy. Don't be put off by some of the bad reviews here. Check it out.
This is neither a good nor a bad book
It's somewhere between. I liked the characters,
and the development of these characters. However
there were too many people to keep straight. Also, the
format of the novel was awkward. The main characters were
interesting people. The written conversation was believable
and well done. I read it all but occasionally felt it was
labor. Other times I read eagerly to see what was happening.
The whole book covers 5 years, and deals with close friends.
The timeline is built around Harvard's 5 year reunions.