Aside from some loud and tearful contention over our choice of
baby dolls — during the actual liturgy, a
pink -
romper - wearing, crayon - disfigured pretender to the role of John the Baptist kept trying to insinuate itself into the proceedings — everything went smoothly, and we hope that the whole feast thing will have been enough of a liturgical mnemonic that people will be begging us to repeat it this time next year.
In The Red Book, her touching, provocative, whip - smart
romp of a novel where The Big Chill meets Mary McCarthy's The Group, Kogan begins with the Red Book entries for a group of roommates from the class of 1989 who are all headed for their 20th reunion weekend just as the financial and professional walls are crumbling around them: a self - made, childless securities broker, recently
pink - slipped, eager to conceive a
baby before her fertility window closes; a blue - blood «artist» and former lesbian, married to a writer's - blocked male novelist, living disingenuously and beyond their means off a no - longer - viable trust fund; a former actress, the star of every school production, who has become the stay - at - home wife to a famous Hollywood director; the adopted war orphan, now a foreign correspondent clinging to her dying industry, whose war journalist husband has recently been killed.