Forty-something Lady Daniels is recently separated from her ten years older husband and now needs help taking care of their toddler son so she can focus on writing a memoir that focuses on her life with now eighteen-year-old non-verbal son Seth. She places an ad for a live-in nanny for the summer, and Esther Fowler responds to the Craiglist ad and is the first interview. While Lady doesn’t check things out too deeply, she feels that she can trust Esther after they hit it off right away. Lady hires her after son Devin takes to her immediately without consulting practical husband Karl, which complicates their marriage further. Told in both Lady and S’s points of view, you get both of their troubled histories with men and their mothers, and you definitely see how this shapes them into women who aren’t models of good behavior in the present day.
Lady’s under contract to write this book, but she’s blocked and having a hard time taking care of her sons and a home since she asked Karl to move out on a trial basis. Even though Karl isn’t Seth’s father, she’s feeling betrayed by the closeness between the two of them, and even the relationship between Karl’s artist twin sister Kat and Seth, so she’s trying to distance everyone–even if she’s failing miserably at controlling everything around her. But introducing Esther–who now only wants to be called “S”–is a blessing and a curse. Lady hasn’t always been the most maternal with her second son, Devin, and she’s soon a little jealous of S. She also finds out that she’s almost always the last person to know what Seth is up to–at school and in his personal life. He’s feeling smothered, and he’s lashing out in the only ways he can gain control. While Lady had feelings of abandonment throughout her life, she was definitely holding on to Seth too tight while pushing everyone else away.
While Lady struggles with her guilt about motherhood and her past relationships with Seth’s father and her own mother, S has her own complicated relationships with her mother and an ex-boyfriend who thought she wasn’t enough of an artist for him to take seriously, so he dumped her. When her last big art project failed, she’s decided to take on a new one: to become her mother from the early 1990s and take on the same job: a nanny. S struggles with moving between being Esther, being Kathy (her mother), and being an entirely new person around this family. Kathy is bold, unapologetic, has no fashion sense, has no boundaries, and drinks way too much when she’s not on duty. S also starts a new art project while she’s doing this one, which further spirals her behavior into out of control categories. I really couldn’t relate to S at all. She was of the train wreck variety, with an alcoholic, self-centered mother and a father who thought Esther could do no wrong. It’s amazing that almost no one was hurt with her around.
I give Woman No. 17 a four out of five. The Southern California setting was very beautiful, and I could picture it easily even though I’ve never been there. This book was one that I kept reading and reading, just waiting for all of the different threads to meet and explode. The aftermath wasn’t as bad as I was hoping, but that’s true in real life as well. Most lies came to light, so the ending was satisfying. The novel is really about women and how they can sabotage their relationships with family and friends, and especially how your past shapes you in the future whether you want it to or not. The writing is excellent and I really wanted to see how everyone ended up, even though it featured two women who are just so unhealthily so self-focused, so self-destructive and irresponsible. One was barely an adult and the one that was an adult didn’t act like one until the very end. Ultimately, this is the story of two women who become their mothers: one on accident and one by design.
Find WOMAN No. 17
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About Edan Lepucki
EDAN LEPUCKI is the New York Times bestselling author of the novel California as well as the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me. A contributing editor and staff writer at the Millions, she has also published fiction and nonfiction in McSweeney’s, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Cut, and elsewhere. She is the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles.
Connect with Edan Lepucki
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Giveaway
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Edan Lepucki’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS for WOMAN No. 17:
Monday, May 8th: Bewitched Bookworms
Tuesday, May 9th: Books and Bindings
Wednesday, May 10th: A Chick Who Reads
Thursday, May 11th: Thoughts on This ‘n That
Tuesday, May 16th: Kahakai Kitchen
Wednesday, May 17th: No More Grumpy Bookseller
Thursday, May 18th: A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall
Monday, May 22nd: Art Books Coffee
Tuesday, May 23rd: Palmer’s Page Turners
Wednesday, May 24th: A Bookish Way of Life
Thursday, May 25th: Booksie’s Blog
Tuesday, May 30th: SJ2B House of Books
Wednesday, May 31st: Fuelled by Fiction
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Wow, I think I’d really get pulled into this story. I’m glad you were so satisfied with the ending – I really appreciate a believable ending!
Thanks for being a part of the tour.
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