The Trouble With Catherine

Rating:
Summary: pretty good character, pretty pointless book
Review: Catherine Lacey grew up on the docks of New York and now runs her family's fish business. She lives in a converted building and her parents live downstairs, and the office is on the bottom floor. Her dad cheats on her mom. She is engaged to a guy she wants to break up with because he is more educated than her and therefore different. She started sleeping around when she was 12 and that's how she solves her problems.

Catherine is very independent and fiesty, but she is stupid as well. Luckily, Hruby points that out via other characters. She is a "poverty snob" who cries poor-mouth about how she grew up around fish. She doesn't like anyone who is richer than her. That makes her human. The fact is, though, she learns nothing throughout this meandering book. And frankly, how independent can a 29-year-old be when she works for her father and lives in the same building with her parents -- and her mom has a key to her place? Please.

Rating:
Summary: a strong female lead, and a story worthy of her
Review: I *really* liked this book. I kept on carrying it with me, catching small moments to keep reading because I was so enthralled with the story. The main character is very appealing, and a wonderful change from all the "independent" female figures who just crumple into a tepid, traditional and trite charicature of a middling everywoman at the end of their journey. As a semi-regular reader of chick-lit, I'm all too familiar with this procedure - where the protagonist goes off to find herself, and discovers that she really is happy with so many of the mainstream conventions that she snubbed in the past. Now that she's seen the light, she gets to maintain a quirk or two to prove that she hasn't succumbed to the tyranny of the majority. However, she's really just a cookie cutter mold with slightly different icing.

Sorry if that was overly bitter about other books that have failed to live up to their beginnings. But this story was great not simply because it didn't fall down as others have. It is worthy of praise in its own right, simply because the story is original without being contrived and the characters are gripping. True, many of the supporting ones could have been developed more than they were, but this isn't Dickens.

A nicely rewarding treat when I was expecting pure fluff!

Rating:
Summary: Suprisingly good!
Review: I picked up this book expecting another one in a long line of books I've recently read that follow the "Bridget Jones" line of thinking....woman on the verge of 30, being threatened by the fact that all her friends are getting married, etc etc etc.

What I read surprised me. 'The Trouble with Catherine' is a heartfelt, honestly written, funny book. Hruby expertly goes beyond the surface story and really gets the nuances of her characters down.

Unlike some female characters in recent novels who play at being an "independent woman" while secretly yearning for husband and babies, Catherine embodies the "independent spirit" which makes her life that much more difficult to find a man who can equal her without being threatened.

I look forward to Ms. Hruby's next book!