The Ivy Chronicles - Softcover

Quinn, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452287227 ISBN 13: 9780452287228

Publisher: Plume, 2006

Synopsis

When turbocharged Park Avenue mom Ivy Ames finds that she?s been downsized from her platinum-card corporate job and her marriage, she swiftly realizes that she?s going to need a whole new way to support herself and her two private-school daughters. So she dreams up a new business?helping upscale New Yorkers get their little darlings into the most exclusive kindergartens in the city. What begins as one woman?s bid to earn a living becomes an everywoman?s tale of midlife reinvention and unexpected romance, set in a looking-glass world where even tots have résumés.

?If you think you may be a neurotic parent, read this and feel sane.?
?Allison Pearson, author of I Don?t Know How She Does It

?Entertaining . . . Picks up where The Nanny Diaries left off.?
?The New York Post

?[A] ferociously funny tale.?
?Us Weekly

?Hilarious.?
?Child magazine

?Tales of Manhattan?s elite trying to get their tots into private schools is sure to make you smirk condescendingly . . . The Ivy Chronicles delivers.?
?Boston Herald

?The brilliant, witty, and ultimately soulful heroine is a perfect tour guide who will leave you laughing up your latté.?
?Jill Kargman, author of The Right Address and Wolves in Chic Clothing

?With humor and heart, Karen Quinn brilliantly skewers the insanely competitive world of wealth we love to hate. Readers will cheer for Ivy!?
?Leslie Schnur, author of The Dog Walker

About this title

Review

Karen Quinn's The Ivy Chronicles is the amusing story of what happens when a New Yorker loses her job, her husband, and her ritzy Park Avenue pad and is forced to carve out a new niche for herself and her two private school-educated daughters. After transferring the girls to public school and renting a shabby-chic (at best) flat upstairs from a knicherie, Ivy Ames takes her billionaire friend Faith's advice and starts a consulting business to help privileged pre-schoolers get into the city's premier kindergartens. Light on substance yet heavy on laughs, Quinn does a reasonably successful job of following in the well-heeled footsteps of earlier gossip lit standouts such as The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.

While Ivy's moral quandaries (is it really wrong to accept an alligator-skin Prada in exchange for securing a child's placement at a top "Baby Ivy") and often raunchy romances form the basis for this exposé, it is the toddlers' family stories that get the most laughs along the way. From Maria Kutcher, whose mob boss father is often referred to as "Kutcher the Butcher" to Winnie Weiner, a "nice Jewish girl from the Upper West Side" who becomes the African-American WaShaunte Washington in order to snag a "diversity" spot at the top schools, Quinn spares no one when it comes to exposing the habits of the rich and almost-famous. Yet even as Ivy begins to see the error of her snobbish ways, Quinn never quite lets her off the hook completely ("...it was such a relief to have a powerful man to lean on. Why couldn't I have one of my very own? Why?"). Still, for those of us who are in need of a quick laugh and have a few hours to spare, The Ivy Chronicles promises to entertain and amuse. --Gisele Toueg

From the Back Cover

"If you think you may be a neurotic parent, read this and feel sane."
—Allison Pearson, author of I Don’t Know How She Does It

"Entertaining . . . Picks up where The Nanny Diaries left off."
—The New York Post

"[A] ferociously funny tale."
—Us Weekly

"Hilarious."
—Child magazine

"Tales of Manhattan’s elite trying to get their tots into private schools is sure to make you smirk condescendingly . . . The Ivy Chronicles delivers."
—Boston Herald

"The brilliant, witty, and ultimately soulful heroine is a perfect tour guide who will leave you laughing up your latté."
—Jill Kargman, author of The Right Address and Wolves in Chic Clothing

"With humor and heart, Karen Quinn brilliantly skewers the insanely competitive world of wealth we love to hate. Readers will cheer for Ivy!"
—Leslie Schnur, author of The Dog Walker

About this edition

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0452287227
• ISBN 13: 9780452287228
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352