Where Love Goes
Maynard's precocious debut 23 years ago at age 18 was founded on unsparing commentary on contemporary American life?but the same reliance on pop culture and brand names reduces her new novel to a paean to the middlebrow. Claire Temple is part Martha Stewart, part supermother, a children's museum director in a New England town. A curiously colorless character, she is involved in a series of relationships with vividly drawn?if not very competent?men. Ex-husband Sam fights dirty for custody, paints her as the heavy and never contributes enough money. Mickey, met through a personal ad, is Claire's one true love, but he communicates with her only by phone and, in any case, says he doesn't like children. Tim is a penniless biology teacher with a sad-sack seven-year-old: it is the loss of his child (reminiscent of The Good Mother)that proves the one compelling story element here. Meanwhile, Claire's children have the requisite melodramatic flourishes: a blue-haired, nose-ringed friend; scrapes with the law; a pregnancy scare; an auto accident. As an everywoman, Claire rings true, if familiar, but her ruminations on the way love dies are provocative. Literary Guild alternate; author tour.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.