April Rising - Hardcover

Corene Lemaitre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002257289 ISBN 13: 9780002257282

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1999

Synopsis

A funny, sharp and also moving first novel about a young woman – and a whole family – taught a lesson in life by the person they least expected to be able to teach them anything at all.
Although she sees herself rather differently (a very mature feat of storytelling in itself), Ellen is a spoiled middle-class girl who has never done a day’s work in her life. Returning from a trip to Europe with the intention of surprising her doting parents and adored elder brother, she is appalled to find her place in the arty, health-food-eating, politically-conscious family taken by an overweight junk-food and soap-opera fan by the name of April who introduces herself as the brother’s girlfriend. Worst of all, the entire family seems very fond of April to the extent that they are all eating chocolate breakfast cereal and ignoring the exotic traveller Ellen.
There follows a very funny comedy of modern manners, in which Ellen tries to get rid of April, and in so doing comes eventually to grasp some home truths about herself.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

"Who's been sleeping in my bed?" takes on new meaning in Lema?tre's fractured fairy tale, a scathingly zany take on Goldilocks. When 20-something Ellen Kaplan returns home to suburban Philmont, Pa., after a two-year romp through Europe, she expects to find her family unchanged. Unfortunately for Ellen, her bed has been taken over by her brother James's new girlfriend, April, a junk-food-eating, born-again Christian from a blue-collar family in California. In addition to displaying April's collection of porcelain Jesuses, the formerly macrobiotic Kaplans now stock the pantry with Doritos and Tastykakes to please the intruder, and at her urging, James is about to abandon his philosophy Ph.D. at Berkeley in favor of a career as a trash collector. Although Ellen did not send a single postcard during her travels, she resolves to recover her rightful place in the family, wresting power away from April before it's too late. A domestic war is soon raging, but before long Ellen is forced to acknowledge that she and April have more in common than she would like to admit. Though she is, as her father says, "lazy, spoiled and megalomaniacal," Ellen is also a wittily acerbic narrator, and her descriptions of secondary characters like her technologically precocious younger brother, Matthew, who lives in the basement with his computer, are sharp and funny. Lema?tre spells out the Goldilocks connection early on, rather than trusting readers to put two and two together on their own, and some of the novel's satirical observations are shrill. Still, when a series of epiphanies causes Ellen to recognize that she has not been betrayed by her family, but rather has wronged them by taking them for granted, irony is subsumed by a story with a moral for spoiled children everywhere. (Jan.) FYI: Lema?tre hosts a Philadelphia TV talk show, Authors Etc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When Ellen Kaplan returns home unexpectedly after two years without a word to her upper-class family, she discovers that her world has been turned upside-down by an uneducated working-class stranger named April. The usurper has moved into Ellen's room, beguiled Ellen's parents (who now treat April like their daughter), and stolen the heart of Ellen's favorite brother, James. Ellen decides at once that she must remove April from the family and destroy April's romance with James. As Ellen moves to reclaim her turf, she discovers that April may not be her enemy and may, in fact, be the best friend she has never had. Ellen's journey from selfish and arrogant snob to caring friend is funny and filled with eccentric characters, from bawdy, incompetent librarians to an 11-year-old computer genius. Recommended for public libraries.
-Karen Anderson, Superior Court Law Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002257289
• ISBN 13: 9780002257282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 276