#12 - Trouble

And this one (Trouble, by Kate Christensen (Doubleday, 2009) wasn't terribly exciting, either. From the summary, it sounded promising:

"A vibrant story of female friendship and midlife sexual awakening from the acclaimed author of The Great Man. Josie is a Manhattan psychotherapist living a comfortable life with her husband and daughter - until, while suddenly flirting with a man at a party, she is struck with the sudden realization that she must leave her passionless marriage. A thrillingly sordid encounter with a stranger she meets at a bar immediately follows. At the same time, her college friend Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star, is being pilloried in the press for sleeping with a much younger man who happens to have a pregnant girlfriend. This proves to be red meat to the gossip hounds of the Internet. The two friends escape to Mexico City for a Christmas holiday of retreat and rediscovery of their essential selves. Sex has gotten these two bright, complicated women into interesting trouble, and the story of their struggles to get out of that trouble is totally gripping at every turn. A tragicomedy of marriage and friendship, Trouble is a funny, piercing, and moving examination of the battle between the need for connection and the quest for freedom that every modern woman must fight."

It never quite delivers, though. As Times reviewer Kaui Hart Hemmings put it,

There aren’t any obstacles in “Trouble.” I suppose the main line of suspense is whether Josie will form a relationship with Felipe, and whether her rapture will blind her to her friend’s possible relapse. Blink and you’ll miss Raquel’s downward spiral. Josie certainly does. Yet despite some cursory devastation, things more or less work out in the end. Readers love trouble, too, and “Trouble” doesn’t have enough of it. The best part of this novel comes early on, when Josie is treating various patients while ruminating over her own problems. This is before she talks with her husband and before she knows what she’s going to do with her life. The writing at this point is sharp, clear and often hilarious. Christensen sweeps us through a cast of perfectly delineated neurotic patients in treatment with their distracted, hung-over and anxious therapist. Josie’s adventure with Raquel lacks these interactions with characters who bring out the conflicted protagonist in ways no exotic city ever could. And while at times the women’s friendship is illuminated by Mexico City, all sense of urgency disappears once they are there. Over the border, the tension of the novel is forsaken, and it becomes little more than a travelogue, reducing particular lives to anonymous dots. For a writer, that’s real trouble.