{"product_id":"love-work-childrenisbn-9780375760693","title":"Love, Work, Children","description":"Morningside Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood sandwiched between Columbia University and the Hudson River, is home to an eclectic mix of academics, struggling artists, and rooted families. In this distinctive world, Peter Frankel, a successful partner in a prestigious law firm, lives a seemingly contented life with his talented wife and his two Ivy League—educated children. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet in middle age Peter finds himself discontent. His wife’s narrowness and her preoccupation with appearances leaves him cold, his job does not fulfill his creative bent, and he fears that his children, Susan and Louis, have grown into skeptical young adults who shun marriage and stability. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo when Peter’s wife is badly hurt in a car accident and lies in a coma, he finds himself guiltily relieved–and newly drawn toward his children as they too struggle with ambivalent feelings about the mother who’s never really shown them much love. As Susan, a cerebral doctoral student, becomes unhappily involved with an aspiring playwright and Louis is caught up in a futile pursuit of an ambitious journalist, Peter’s own quiet life is shaken up, and longings he has stifled for years come rumbling to the surface.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFreed from his wife’s judgments, Peter throws himself into his greatest pleasure, the work he does for a foundation that funds offbeat artistic projects. And as his passion for this work ignites, so does his desire for another woman. But the stubborn morality that has steered Peter’s life is a force to be reckoned with–and one from which he may never entirely escape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLove, Work, Children\u003c\/b\u003e is a profoundly insightful novel about two generations and the colorful urban world they inhabit. A superb portrayal of one of New York’s exceptional neighborhoods, this is a story, ultimately, about the self-imposed obstacles to true happiness–and a testament to the joy one can find in overcoming them.\u003cu\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eMorningside Heights\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] rich, romantic novel . . . peopled with emotionally intriguing characters. Mendelson [creates] a stage akin to those of Jane Austen and George Eliot.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eO: The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Morningside Heights [is] a sensational backdrop for a long, smart, soapy novel of manners, which is what Mendelson delivers in her fiction debut.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Leisurely storytelling of the most enjoyable sort . . . Mendelson draws you in and keeps you charmed with her three-dimensional characters and the intricacies of the plot.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like a good Jane Austen novel, this book focuses on who will marry whom and who will inherit the real estate. . . . The movement of the plot is graceful and the characters nicely drawn.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Deeply satisfying . . . Having devoured [Morningside Heights], I am prepared to guarantee that her many fans won’t be disappointed. . . . Mendelson is funny and wry.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eDetroit Free Press\u003c\/b\u003eCheryl Mendelson received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She has practiced law in New York City and taught philosophy at Purdue and Columbia universities. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eHome Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House\u003c\/i\u003e and the novel \u003ci\u003eMorningside Heights\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in New York City.CHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Four Forty-four Riverside Drive, a fine old residential building in   Morningside Heights, was filled with aging couples whose grown children   remained unmarried. The phenomenon was so general that it had begun to   be openly talked of. Not so long ago, the Frankls and the Holmeses,   whose daughters had been best friends all their lives, had been   congratulating themselves on how successfully they had taught their   children not to rush into marriage and how this augured well for their   ultimate happiness. But now that the children were all around thirty,   their restraint began to look like indifference and their unmarried   state like a permanent one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Until now, their sixtyish parents had led placid lives. Peter Frankl   was a lawyer who, with his wife, Lesley, lived in one of the building’s   two penthouses, with forty feet of windows framing sunsets over the   Hudson. The Holmeses, Herbert and Ingrid, were both psychotherapists.   They had a pleasant corner apartment on the fourth floor, from which,   in winter when the trees were bare, they could see a few gleaming   inches of the river. Neither the Frankls nor the Holmeses had money   worries or health problems; all of them had significant careers except   Lesley, who, however, painted contentedly in a home studio and now and   then sold a canvas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Peter Frankl’s marriage wasn’t all he would have liked. But he had put   the children first, ensuring that they grew up in the calm of civil and   secure family life, and deemed his marital problems tolerable. The   Holmeses, by contrast, had one of those extraordinarily close, warm   marriages that succeed through an unlikely amalgam of egoism and   altruism, which, although rare and peculiar, is inevitably regarded as   ordinary—perhaps because such unions are as boring and offputting to   others as they are satisfying to the married pair itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The tenderly reared offspring of these couples had grown up to be   everything their fathers and mothers could wish for. The children’s   happiness and safety was the sweetest part of their parents’ lives and   the rock on which the rest was built. This was true of all of them, but   of Peter Frankl especially.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Peter, who had been orphaned when he was twenty, was terrified of   loneliness. Loneliness, he knew, was fierce, with claws and fangs, not   at all the tame, mild, forlorn thing people pretended it was. His wish   for the children to find love was urgent and fearful, therefore, but he   saw ominous evidence that, for them, love was not going to come easy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    True, his son, Louis, now in his early thirties, always had girls   running after him, but he never seemed to get serious about any of   them—not that Peter had ever really liked any that he had seen. Peter   shifted from theory to theory about this: maybe there weren’t many nice   girls out there nowadays, or maybe nice girls didn’t like Louis.   Sometimes he even wondered how much Louis liked girls. His daughter   Susan’s problem was even worse. Boys had always ignored her; a real   boyfriend had appeared only once or twice in her life, the last time in   college. Nonetheless, Peter had felt serious concern about her only   when she passed her twenty-sixth birthday with no attachment, and his   anxiety increased on each subsequent birthday until, on her   twenty-ninth, when Susan had not had a real date for years, it   sharpened into something more painful. Peter then became unequivocally   unhappy about Susan. Right around then, Louis, too, had been wounded by   someone he had been seeing briefly, a serious girl who was studying   history. She went out with Louis three or four times, then told him   that he was just not her type. Peter was delighted that Louis had   pursued someone like her and was not surprised that she did not pursue   Louis. Whatever the reasons, both his children now seemed to him lonely   and troubled, settling permanently into a scattered, dry existence   devoid of the intimate comforts of family life. Peter could no longer   say to himself, as he always had before, that he didn’t really mind his   own disappointments—not as long as the children were happy. There were   now times when, adding their disappointments to his own, he felt that   life had mistreated him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Both Susan and Louis were good-looking, and Louis was tall,   incomprehensibly so, given the merely average height of his parents;   but in temperament and tastes the two were startlingly different.   Louis, in his father’s opinion, was his sister’s inferior in the   personal qualities that favored love—empathy, warmth, loyalty,   altruism—despite the fact that he had so many girlfriends and Susan had   no boyfriends. Susan had all those virtues, but only a few intimates   ever saw much of them. With strangers, she often had a grave manner   that made her come across as somewhat older than she was, and her   conversation got stilted and bookish. Sometimes even her adoring father   felt that something was a little off in Susan. As she got older, he   more and more often wondered whether she hadn’t turned into a bit of a   nebbish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Susan was working for her PhD in musicology at Columbia, and her   conversation was obscure with Renaissance musical arcana. Peter admired   and encouraged her plans for a scholarly career and thought her   brilliant, sure of professional, if not personal, success. She spent   hours practicing her piano, pursuing her studies, and playing endless   games of solitaire in the little apartment Peter had bought her on   114th Street a couple of years ago, when, at twenty-six, she insisted   that she was too old to live at home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Louis had had his own place on the East Side until he gave it up to   return to school, but he had no scholarly tastes. He never read a book   and never spent a minute indoors if he could avoid it. He had dates and   played sports and went to parties with friends who were as unthinking   as he and generally even richer. He was finishing an MBA at Harvard,   where he had made a respectable record with surprisingly little effort,   considering that the program was famously geared to grinds; he would   undoubtedly line up a high-paying job in finance when he graduated—a   plan his mother approved and his father did not. Louis had brains,   Peter thought, if he’d only use them. Why would a boy with all his   options, all his privileges and connections, go into finance? Peter,   who admired scholars, artists, and philosophers, and regretted having   settled for the law, which was at least better than finance, found it   baffling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The senior members of the Frankl family never socialized with those of   the Holmes family, but the two sets of parents had plenty of   opportunities on the elevator and at the mailboxes to comment on their   girls’ situations, and each knew the other’s daughter well. The   Holmeses’ Mallory had played beside Susan Frankl in the sandbox at the   playground on the Riverside Promenade and attended nursery school with   her, and afterward they had gone to the same exclusive school, where   both were outstanding students, although Mallory, unlike Susan, was   neither bookish nor musical, and was what has always been called   “popular.” From the time she turned thirteen, Mallory had never been   without a boyfriend for more than seven nanoseconds, as she put it—at   least not until now. There were always a host of girls and boys with   whom she went places and did things casually, whereas Susan’s   connections with people were either intimate or distant, nothing in   between. For the most part, Mallory was truly close only with Susan or,   occasionally, with some friend of Susan’s, and with her own parents,   whose love was so rich and wise that she felt little need for anyone   else’s. Possibly there had been too many boyfriends, but none of the   breakups seemed to have much effect on Mallory’s high spirits and   friendly cheerfulness. The Holmeses had only recently begun to worry   that something was wrong in this pattern, when Mallory broke up with   the young man with whom she had been living for two years. To her   parents, this felt awfully like a divorce, and they were upset. But   Mallory did not appear to feel it as much as her parents. She was   quiet, perhaps a bit low-key, perhaps worked a little too much, and   that was about the extent of it. Mallory had picked up an MA in   journalism at Columbia a couple of years ago and had recently got a job   in the Features section of the New York Gazette. With her salary and a   little help from her parents, she was just able to afford the small   apartment near Columbia where she had lived while finishing her degree.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Susan and Mallory, now settled blocks apart in the neighborhood where   they had grown up, had recently begun to discuss a shared sense that   the shape of the future was vague. Mallory, for once, had no one new   waiting in the wings and had begun to falter in her confidence about   finding the sort of man who would suit her, and Susan had begun saying   right out that she thought she would stay single. She questioned the   institution of marriage and doubted, in any event, that she was suited   for it. Also, she saw that remaining single was commonly the fate of   women like herself, despite their privileges and advantages, even among   those who believed in and sought marriage, and she had a hard time   imagining the man who might fall in love with her. After all, no one   had felt that way about her yet. Why should it happen now, when she was   almost thirty?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Of course I wish I had someone,” Susan said to her father shyly, “not   necessarily a husband—just someone to be with, but it’s not in the   cards, as far as I can tell. I don’t seem to send the right message or   something.” Peter Frankl grieved when she said this, and afterward he   brooded more intensely than ever about how he might help her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Susan said much the same to Mallory in an intimate late night talk on   her sofa. “That’s not true!” Mallory protested. She was always   protective and affectionately loyal with Susan. “You just need to find   someone who’s a little quirky, like you, and sooner or later you will.   You have to be patient.” This was simple-minded encouragement, but   Susan wanted it badly enough that it succeeded in making her look a   little happier. Mallory, though, wished to give more substantial aid,   and she thought and thought about how she might shorten her friend’s   wait. Despite her malaise, Mallory herself, never having waited very   long, didn’t expect to this time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the meantime, Peter Frankl was so distressed by his sad conversation   with Susan that, after worrying for several days, he decided to talk   the situation over with his wife, even though Susan’s remarks had been,   implicitly, confidential. Susan and Lesley weren’t as close as some   mothers and daughters, and she wouldn’t have said such things to her   mother. But still, he thought, it was worth a try. Weren’t mothers   supposed to help daughters with problems like these? Didn’t they know   how it all worked?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I told you so, Peter,” Lesley responded when Peter described his   conversation with Susan, “years and years ago. I washed my hands years   ago.” Her husband’s unaccustomed soliciting of her opinion provoked   anxiety, which in turn made her feel spiteful toward him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Refresh my memory,” he said with a peculiarly mild, tolerant sarcasm   in which the secure assumption of being undetected would have been   clear to an observer but, apparently, was not to his wife, with whom he   often adopted this attitude.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Don’t be silly.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Lesley, you never said anything of the kind.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I told you she should’ve gone on Teen Tour in her senior year.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You can’t send a girl who’s reading Henry James and playing Scriabin   on Teen Tour. She wouldn’t have fit in. She would never have spoken to   us again.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “We should have made her go and made her fit in. The kind of kids who   go on Teen Tour get married. They know how to have fun and talk to   people and get along with each other. Look at Louis. He doesn’t have   these problems.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I’m sorry I brought it up. And, Lesley, I’m beginning to think that   Louis isn’t doing any better than Susan, no matter how it looks.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Don’t be silly. When Louis decides he’s ready to get married, he’ll   find someone right away—not that you’d care if he had problems. And   with Susan, the damage was done years ago. She’s not a normal girl. You   never wanted her to be normal. You wanted this fancy intellectual, and   now you’re paying the price. I washed my hands.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You’re making it up. But, okay, have it your way. Louis is perfect,   and I personally, all by myself, ruined Susan, whatever. Still, you   could take a little interest in what could be done to help her now.”   Peter’s real opinion, of course, was that Susan, whatever her problems,   had become a daughter to be proud of, while Louis’s character was   flimsy; Susan’s intellectuality, and Louis’s lack of it, in Peter’s   opinion, went far to explain why.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “There’s nothing you can do for her now,” Lesley said. “She wouldn’t   let you anyway. She wants to be independent. And you’re all for it—even   though buying her that apartment was maybe not such a good idea, which   I told you at the time, because she’ll just hole up there and never   meet anyone. She should have roommates.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “All right, Lesley. We’ll let it go. Susan and Louis can take care of   themselves.” This was only what he wished were true, not what he   believed. But, in the Frankl family, Peter was the designated worrier,   and when his appeal for wifely help proved futile, he felt obliged to   restore his wife to peace of mind and reassume the burden of concern.   Lesley immediately sensed her liberation and relaxed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Peter, you’re on your own Saturday night, darling. I’m going to the   fund-raiser, that legal aid thing in New Jersey, with the Rostovs.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I can’t see why you have any interest in doing that, but I’ll be fine.   Maybe I’ll take Susan to dinner.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No. She’s going to Mallory’s party. Mallory’s having thirty or forty   people in that tiny place.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Good. Maybe Susan’ll meet someone.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Not with Mallory around—and all those girls who know enough to smile   and talk.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Your daughter is not the loser you think she is, Lesley.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I washed my hands.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    CHAPTER 2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Late on a clear, cold Sunday morning in mid-March, Mallory Holmes’s\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e       party was under discussion in several neighborhood apartments\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    that smelled of coffee and were strewn with newspapers and clothes. The   night before, despite a spring storm so violent that Mallory had   worried that people would stay home, her two small rooms, even the half   closet that held her desk and chair, had been crowded with people. And   from the first moments it had been clear that the party was a success,   notwithstanding a brief quarrel that was snarling enough to shock into   silence the dozen or so guests who heard it. Everyone except Mallory   herself came away with the transformed inner landscape, the altered   perspective, that good parties always give.","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303034933477,"sku":"NP9780375760693","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375760693_edb06283-3c82-44c9-83a7-cf34551e0ecb.jpg?v=1730752820","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/love-work-childrenisbn-9780375760693","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}