Rating: 
Summary: What Really Matters
Review: Lucinda Trout calls her latest assignment "A Year in Provence meets Lake Wobegon Days". Her acerbic, gramatically-challenged boss calls it "Girl, Interrupted meets Deliverance". I'd say Meghan Daum's novel, The Quality of Life Report (Penguin Books, 2003) is Billie Letts channeling the spirit of Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed.
At 29, Lucinda Trout is trying to live the hip life in the fast pace of New York City. Her life (as it were) consists of a tiny, rat-infested, over-priced apartment, a maddening boss, a cadre of shallow friends, and minor celebrity status as the lifestyle correspondent for a local talk show. Tired of reporting on thong underwear and yogurt, Lucinda jumps at her boss' offer to send her on assignment, reporting on methamphetamine addiction in the small Midwestern town of Prairie City.
In Prairie City, Lucinda finds a beautiful simplicity she hadn't thought possible. With visions of Sam Shepard dancing in her head, she relocates to Prairie City to produce "The Quality of Life Reports" - talk show segments designed to sell New Yorkers a first-hand glimpse at life in the provinces.
But life in Prairie City doesn't turn out to be as simple as it looks. Armed with only an idealized image of the community she has come to exploit, Lucinda falls for (and moves into a barn with) a local man, Mason Clay. Life begins to unravel as Lucinda contends with Mason's children, farm life, the harsh prairie winter, and finally the darker secrets that are driving Mason's life. In doing so, she confronts her own fantasies about "the quality of life" and comes to a more mature understanding of what's truly important.
The novel bears an unmistakable resemblance to the author's own life. Once a reporter for The New Yorker, Meghan Daum picked up and moved to Nebraska (while Prairie City is never placed in a particular state in the text, the description certainly matches Nebraska closely). Living in a small farmhouse on the prairie, listening to the shrieking wind that once caused "prairie madness" during the westward emigration of the 19th century, Daum conceived Lucinda as a means of exploring our American identity in the geographical search for the good life.
Without an author who understands and deeply loves Midwestern culture, this novel would have been an insulting, chick-lit failure. But Daum knows the Heartland well enough to pick on its quirks with the affection of a sibling, not the mockery of an outsider. This allows her to often be piercingly funny without demeaning nor lionizing the lives of her characters. In turn, her humor brings a tone of mirth to Lucinda's story that keeps Daum always above sentimentality and emotional manipulation of the reader. Even during the book's most serious moments, Daum maintains the elegance of perspective. She is compassionate with her characters, even as they fail, pick themselves up and stumble on, only to fail again later. They are quirky without losing humanity; funny without being affectedly sassy.
For this, we can forgive even Daum's most biting wit, the clearest example of which is her portrayal of Prairie City's women's book club. With her compassionate eye for the absurd, Daum takes on the middle-class fad of book discussion groups by sending Lucinda into this impassioned bunch who are reading and discussing the typical sort of book club fare - badly-written, pretentious fiction that takes itself way too seriously. Of course, this is just the sort of book Daum has written and, for this, we can love her all the more. Her taste for the ironic doesn't even pass over herself. Quips Lucinda's boss regarding book clubs: "They're so low-brow, they're unibrow." Perhaps the turn of the 21st century will be known for satire that, first and foremost, satirizes itself (The Simpsons and South Park are two obvious examples). If so, Daum is riding the crest of the wave, complete with a book group discussion guide in the back.
Yet, in spite of it all, Lucinda fumbles towards the discovery of what's really important in life. And, true to both real life and Daum's style, her epiphanies come with a whisper, not a bang. Lucinda realizes it is she, not the people of Prairie City, who are backwards and provincial. Her fascination with the town was, all along, her fascination with the supposed glamor of country living and the folksy charm of the townspeople which she tries desperately to hang onto and portray in her Quality of Life Reports, even as the evidence for her fantasy dwindles. Her maturity comes with love of place, which comes with honesty - Prairie City is not Jan Karon's Mitford, but neither is it Harmonie Korine's Manhattan (which gets an honorable mention in the novel as "about as organic as a John Bonham drum solo at the Ice Capades"). Discovering what's truly important comes with mirth, compassion, irony, and an acceptance that the truth is probably somewhere in the murky middle.
Rating: 
Summary: Read My Misspent Youth Instead
Review: As a New Yorker who loves the city but dreams of a land with more apartment space and a cheaper cost of living, I was excited when I was given this book. Sad to say, I was soon disappointed. Daum's clever writing wasn't enough to sustain my interest in the face of uninspiring characters. Though the book may aspire to satire, it just misses the mark.
However, as I enjoy her writing style but not her characters, I turned to her book of essays My Misspent Youth, and I'd give this book four stars. The same themes explored in The Quality of Life Report are more fresh explored in non fiction, and it's Daum's willingness to reveal her not-so-attractive qualities in My Misspent Youth that allow us as readers to look at ourselves just as closely. Undiluted by annoying plot twists and a tiresome heroine, Daum's talent shines through.
Rating:
Summary: Left me with a sense of disappointment...
Review: Based on the title and the synopsis that I read, I fully expected to enjoy this book...and I did for the first few chapters. After that I started becoming totally turned off by Lucinda's stereotyping and narrow-mindedness. I found her choice for a partner (Mason) baffling and eventually appalling and her actions and feelings towards his children disturbing. I'll admit that there were parts that drew me in and I did get a big laugh out of a few others, but overall I was left with a sense of emptiness. I don't know if it's that Lucinda and I took drastically roads after college, but I just could not relate to her in the least, let alone empathize with her. Overall, it was just not a very satisfying read.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven reading experience...
Review: Faced with losing her apartment and the meaninglessness of her job, Lucinda Trout abandons the superficialness, craziness, and expense of NCY and moves to a small city in the midwest. She brings her career with her via freelance assignments, rents an apartment, and begins to socialize with the locals in search of "quality life."Of course, as anyone who is not a NY writer in her late 20's knows, it isn't that easy. Lucinda's first spacious apartments stinks and has fleas, she finds the conversations of her new friends shallow, her boyfriend is a meth addict with 3 children with 3 different women, and she takes up drinking cheap grocery store wine. The Quality of Life report veers from being laugh out loud funny, sad in its exposure of unrealized dreams, and frustrating in that the self centered and condescending lead character can't quite pull the reader all the way into her story. Although readable, this book is disappointing. It could have been so much more, but is too rife with stereotypes, thin characters, and self involvement to do the storyline justice.
Rating:
Summary: Prairie City Home Companion
Review: I enjoyed Meghan Daum's essay on the spendthrift Manhattan lifestyle in her wonderfully titled collection My Misspent Youth. Now Meghan's first novel more than fulfills the promise of her earlier work. She has retained the writing style that made her essays so wonderfully readable, while casting a gimlet eye on her former shallowness. And she wraps it all up in a package of wit, humor, and dead-on satire. I won't bore you with another plot synopsis. Suffice it to say, the author seems to be searching for authenticity. Her critique is of superficial style, represented by the life she left behind in New York City. But she also skewers the women of Prairie City, with their blinkered, politically correct (P.C.?) sloganeering. And the illiterate e-mails from Lucinda's manic boss, Faye Figaro, are an absolute hoot. But it's her main character, Lucinda, subtly, skillfully drawn to represent Manhattan provincialism, who carries the novel's themes. That Meghan Daum has by now enough self knowledge to see clearly her own (and many of her readers') prejudices shows how far she has come since she lived in Manhattan.
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome
Review: I just recently finished Meghan Daum's book: The Quality of Life Report. Once I started reading this I couldn't put it down. Daum's writing style is flawless. I loved all the characters. I believe that many young women can relate to the main character Lucinda Trout. The book has insanely funny moments that will make you laugh out loud. A fantastic story. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: I recieved The Quality of Life Report as a gift recently, I usually don't read this type of book(mystery and horror for me), so I started this book with a not very open mind.
I'm not gonna tell you what the book is about,you can read the book description for that :). But I will tell you that this book is worth reading. It's very entertaining, and will keep your attention. There are quite a few humorous points, that I snickered at, and had to explain to my boyfriend why.
Like all books there were a few points that could have been omitted, and others that drag on a little to long. But all in all this was a well written book. I defintely reccommend The Quality of Life Report, and will be passing along my copy to my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was really looking forward to a fun, dream of open space and country life made reality for a city girl: I got this. However, the main character is really disappointing, shallow and not well developed by the author. Lucinda is not a very likeable character: she decides to move out in the country in the middle of nowhere, yet she criticizes everything about the people and the place. She is there to work, yet we only learn about something like 3 work-related projects she does in the whole book which covers something like 2 years and she seems to spend her time doing nothing. She is not a reliable friend, she uses her acquaintances for her own purpose and after what her experience in Prairie City has been, I wonder why she stays.
Overall it's a very disappointing book. If you're looking for mere entertainment, you have it, but don't look for more.
Rating: 
Summary: A tremendous disappointment
Review: I was very fond of Meghan Daum's first book, My Missspent Youth, and eagerly awaited her first novel. I was sorely disappointed by the results. This is, truly, one of the worst books I have ever read, and certainly the only time I can ever remember becoming angry in retrospect that I had paid full price for a book. Having lived both on the East Coast and in the Midwest, just as Ms. Daum has, I could hardly bear the ignorance and shallowness displayed by her flat, stereotypical characters -- in BOTH locales. It is especially puzzling to read this book knowing that, when she wants to be, Ms. Daum is one of the sharpest observers of human nature to come along in the last twenty years or so. Go back and read her essays "My Misspent Youth" and "Variations on Grief". Ask yourself: how on earth is it possible that one author can be so perceptive and smart, then, only a few years later, write a book that makes her look for all the world as if she is every bit as provincial and shallow as the stereotypes she tries to mock? I can only come up with two answers: one is that Meghan Daum is simply not as smart or insightful as I originally thought her to be. The other, and the one that I hope is true, is that Ms. Daum tried to write a satire of social stereotypes and just completely botched it.
Meghan Daum, please try again. I truly want to believe that you are capable of better. Please prove me right.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but sketchy concept.
Review: Meghan Daum's Quality of Life Report, for most, will be a breath of fresh country air. Main character Lucinda decides to ditch the big city to live in Prarie City, a small Midwestern city. She decides to chronicle her new life by filming Today Show-like segments that will air on an early morning New York City show.
I'm somewhat familiar with Daum's writings, and if I had to guess, I would say that Daum's fictional Prarie City is most likely Lincoln, Nebraska. Being a Nebraskan myself, I found this story a bit hard to believe. Don't get me wrong; Lucinda's darkly comic description of the local supermarket and her oberservations about everything being family-oriented are dead-on accurate. However, the fact that New Yorkers would actually be interested in Lucinda's forays in the Midwest comes off as a bit hard-to-believe. I constantly had to remind myself "Ok, WHY are they doing this?"
Aside from that area of unbelievability, The Quality of Life Report is worth reading merely for some of Lucinda's blindingly straight-forward moments. At one point, she lampoons the film Julian Donkey Boy in a scathing commentary to a fellow New-Yorker. Another funny aspect of the book is Faye, Lucinda's boss. Although Faye's character is exaggerated to the point of being cartoonish, her antics and horribly written emails to Lucinda are nonetheless funny.
As Lucinda adjusts to her new life in the Midwest, honesty becomes a major theme of the book. Lucinda is oftentimes dishonest with HERSELF, people are unbelievably dishonest with her, and in the end, Lucinda's blinding honesty both ruins and heals her. If you can get past the fact that Lucinda's TV show is so absurdly unbelievable, this is a hilairious, well-written book.
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