The recipient of Audie and Earphone Awards Hillary Huber is a topnotch narrator with a solid, rich voice enhanced by a tad of huskiness. She’s equally at ease with narrations and commercial voice-overs. Huber has recorded more than 50 books in the first five years of her career, and her reading of This Beautiful Life is surely another prize winner.
The house of cards pictured on the book’s cover was well chosen. How quickly a reputation can be ruined, a family shattered. This does not bode a pretty story, yet it is a wrenching one perhaps because it all happened so innocently, so rapidly, and readers realize it could happen to them. With her fifth novel Helen Schulman dissects the effects a video gone viral has on a once secure, happy family.
The four Bergamots have recently moved to the Upper West Side of New York. There is Liz, the mother who has discarded her art history career to care for her loved ones, Richard, father and husband who is well on his way to becoming an important part of a major university, shy, naive Jake, 15, and Coco who is six.
Each is trying to find his or her way in these new surroundings. They try to fit in and to that end Jake goes to a party.
It is there that he meets Daisy, an eighth-grader who develops a crush on him. They chat, flirt a little, and then he ignores her. In the hope that Jake will find her attractive enough, mature enough for a sexual encounter Daisy sends him a very explicit video that she has made just for him. Nonplused by this Jake emails it to a friend for advice. The friend sends it on and it goes viral. The video becomes the talk of the Internet and social media sites, shattering reputations, Liz’s standing, and Richard’s hopes for success.
How are they to cope with this sudden shame? Is there any way that they can?
- Gail Cooke
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