Rating: 
Summary: Family of Distractions
Review: Caroline Dunlap comes home from college to sort out her life and realizes life will be different now that her mother, Faith and father, Jack are divorced. And who is looking after Eilot, her brother- apparently Eliot is. He is dreaming up wild schemes and looking for Rosita-his nanny who has disappeared. Jack, Caroline's father is more than eccentric, he is forgetful and remembers his family as the mood strikes him. Faith the mom, is trying to find a new life and after some sort of breakdown recovers quickly and has a fling with a Frenchman she meets at a weekend gathering. Caroline moves through the book with no sense of purpose.This book is full of interesting characters but some of them like Rock, her high school ... smoking friend, and a film documenter she meets at Eliot's school are not fully developed and left to wither. Caroline moves through the book with no sense of purpose.This is a book full of individual stories that don't have time to latch on to each other. The writing is creative and full of descriptions that awaken the senses. And the author is from Vermont- what could be better!!!
Rating:
Summary: A fine first novel
Review: Everyone in this novel seems to be going in circles in their upper class suburban Boston world. Caroline Dunlap, who has just graduated from a proper college, has come home to the world she left and finds it essentially unchanged with everyone coming quietly and oh-so-properly unglued. Everyone is looking for his or her own key to happiness, and it is as their paths cross and overlap that the pathos, humor, and sensitive writing are revealed.
A good summer read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Delightful Comedy of Manners
Review: I found this novel to be a delightful comedy of manners. The setting is Waspy New England but the terrain is self-discovery, and the story is told with equal doses of wit and compassion by a modern-day Jane Austen. The writing is elegant and literary, but my favorite moments in the book were the funny ones--Faith Dunlop, a seemingly fragile ex-housewife who is recovering from a nervous breakdown, liberated from the confines of "recovery" by a hapless French lover; the clueless, preppy patriarch Jack Dunlop overseeing the "breeding" of his prized dogs; the pot-smoking hipster Rock Coughlin walking in on his father's uptight girlfriend, high as a kite, having dipped into Rock's stash. The book is a series of well-crafted moments in the complicated life of the Dunlop family, each one more poignant and complex than the last, drawing you deeper and deeper into the search for their salvation, which comes, at last, from the most unexpected places. A charming and disarmingly perceptive first novel.
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't buy this book but paid (lots) in time spent reading
Review: I had not read any reviews about this work, I admit choosing it as I was attracted by the title. For me this book failed as the author told me things about this world she created and did not show through narrative and character development for me to be able to come to my own conclusions. I felt like she was "teaching girls" in the very worst way. Giving the answers instead of providing the facts and clues to understand on your own. It was dog-dead boring and slow in parts, and I found the sheer number of typos unacceptable. If the author is to write more I hope her publisher treats her work with the respect any published work deserves. To adhere to my family's admonition, "if you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all" she made me curious and I spent quite a bit of time reading "manifold theory" and am inspired to register for a higher math class.
Rating:
Summary: Charming book, sure to delight
Review: I highly recommend this book. Unlike many keenly-observed, character-driven novels, this novel has a plot that hooks you in immediately. And unlike many witty writers, this one pokes fun at her characters but treats even the most unsympathetic ones with tenderness. There are countless observations that will make you laugh out loud as well as scenes that are truly touching, but never saccharine. It is very well-written. This is one of those books that make a great gift--with it's multiple perspectives, it would be perfect for almost any reader.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping and Profound
Review: I was impressed by the author's piece in The New Yorker this fall and have been waiting patiently for this debut novel. It was well worth the wait. The Dunlap family and their hangers-on are reminiscent of characters previously rendered by Updike and Cheever, yet totally original. The author reveals character depths far beneath the usual surface that is merely glossed in a first novel. Although the plot turns on a fascinating mystery, what I think sets this work apart are its brutally honest yet empathic insights into the inner lives of its characters, and by extension into the complex nature of any family. I highly recommend this book, and suspect that the author's public profile is about to rise considerably.
Rating:
Summary: You've got to be more patient than I
Review: I was intrigued by the setting and the good reviews but I agree with the reader who was put off by the slow plot development and large number of characters I wasn't very interested in. Everybody seemed to suffer from some nonspecific malaise, and I just didn't have the stamina to stick around and figure out what was getting everyone down -- I tried to stick with it but other books beckoned. I have to admit that, despite being a huge Henry James and Jane Austen fan, I am not a huge Cheever or Updike fan. So maybe it's me.
Rating: 
Summary: (3.5)Behind the façade of a family in transition
Review: In The Hazards of Good Breeding, a pithy social commentary, it is the rigid social structure of their ancestors that defines the Dunlap's approach to the future, in a distinctly American fashion as the characters and plot are set into a story that recognizes the inherent humor of the human condition. During one fast moving week in Boston, the Dunlap family is on a collision course with a steadily evolving world. Against a background of American history and family tradition, where "all the comforts and grace of good fortune...lie in decaying abundance", the Dunlap's have failed to acknowledge the enormous changes that have touched their family, redefining roles and expectations. The eldest Dunlap boys are grown, but the two remaining children are caught in the intimate family dynamic, post-college Caroline and pre-boarding school Eliot. Their confusion about their parent's activities leads each to precipitous actions, particularly Eliot.
Eliot is a sensitive, compassionate young man who misses his mother, who lives in New York, and his babysitter, who has been conspicuously absent for the last six months. Eliot's mother, Faith, crumbling beneath the weight of her failed 22-year marriage, leaves Eliot in the care of his distant, awkward father in their historical home. During this one fateful week, Jack has a moment of revelation, reflecting on the texture of a constantly changing world. While Caroline Dunlap circles the men in her family, alternately serving in her mother's place and ruminating on her own future, a handsome filmmaker falls into her life to further complicate matters. Faith, the ex-wife, is reawakening after long months of emotional confusion, tentatively reaching out to her children, prompted by their needs and her motherly intuition. But the babysitter, Rosita, is the anomaly in this family dynamic, her absence a catalyst for Eliot's fantasies and Jack's mid-life angst. In spite of the Dunlap's historical heritage, this family is like most others, one foot stuck in yesterday, yet drawn into the vortex of a rapidly changing future. Through a series of events, the family moves towards rapprochement, albeit in unexpected ways, as their world shifts subtly, reconfigured in a manner that provides for individual needs. It is these characters' very real confusion that renders them accessible, even familiar. In her quirky style, Shattuck looks upon the Dunlaps with kindness and compassion. Luan Gaines/2004.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: It has been a long time since I read a book by a major publisher so filled with cliches, so obvious in its character and plot development. The heroine of the novel is not given any significant flaws and as a result is unearthly, inhuman, and the rest of the characters are rough-hewn caricatures. Various typos throughout the book--and to say that a character who goes to school in Cambridge, MA wouldn't know Brigham's ice cream is ridiculous (especially from an author who should know better). Sloppy in too many places.
Rating:
Summary: Slow but steady wins the race.
Review: Jessica Shattuck turns a witty eye to the world of "old-money" in her debut novel "The Hazards of Good Breeding." The Dunlop children fumble their way through growing pains as they attempt to deal with their mother's abandonment and their father's insular, puritanical behavior. A great study in character development, Shattuck also manages to infuse the story with an atmosphere of slow decay prevalent in old WASP neighborhoods. Despite its slow-pace, I enjoyed "Hazards of Good Breeding" for its sharp-focus details and unexpected plot-twists, which kept me entertained throughout. Worth the wait!
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