Reproduction is the Flaw of Love (Delta Fiction)
by Lauren Grodstein
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lauren GrodsteinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-06-28
ISBN: 038533771X
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Delta
Book Reviews of Reproduction is the Flaw of Love (Delta Fiction)
Book Review: Enlightening, even for a guy
Summary: 5 Stars
This review is for Dial Press hardcover edition, July 2004, 211 pages. REPRODUCTION IS THE FLAW OF LOVE is Lauren Grodstein's debut novel.
Joel Miller, most everyone refers to him as Miller, will be 29 next month. As the story opens, Miller waits outside the bathroom door in an apartment in Park Slope, Manhattan, while his girlfriend, Lisa, procrastinates over taking a pregnancy test. The reader correctly assumes that the author will not reveal Lisa's condition until the end of the novel. Meantime, this third person narrative explores Miller's back story from his point of view. We meet his mother Bay and his father Stan, his best friend Grant and his ex girlfriend Blair who, so far, is the love of Miller's life. His story is interesting and the reader learns what to expect of him if the test is positive.
The acknowledgments page begins with, "Thanks to Elliot Grodstein, for teaching me what I needed to know about how a guy's mind works..." Elliot did a good job. Grodstein's male characters deal with angst and anxiety as men are apt to do. Her female characters are as men perceive women, enigmas. The story is enlightening, even for a guy.
Summary of Reproduction is the Flaw of Love (Delta Fiction)
It's a Saturday morning in Brooklyn. Joel Miller, age twenty-eight, stands outside his locked bathroom door. Behind it are his girlfriend Lisa, a Dixie cup, and a pregnancy test. While she stalls for time, Miller is left in his hallway to wonder and wait: for the results of the test, for the pieces of his addled life to come together, for some kind of divine intervention to guide his actions when Lisa finally emerges.Thus begins Lauren Grodstein's beguiling debut novel, a wise, wonderfully assured journey deep into the heart of the commitmentphobic male. Awaiting test results that could determine his future, Miller finds himself replaying all he has seen of love so far. There was his father Stan's awkward balancing act between doting father and failed husband, and his mother Bay's refusal to accept that Stan was never coming back. There was his playboy friend Grant's devastation upon falling for the one woman he couldn't have. And most of all, there was Miller's own prior relationship--with Blair, the aloof beauty he can't stop thinking about, the one who got away. With past and present colliding in his hallway, Miller begins to realize just how little he really knows about intimacy, love and potential fatherhood--and more important, about what he's going to do next.
Reproduction is the Flaw of Love fearlessly charts the romantic odyssey of one endearing New York bachelor, and in so doing illuminates some universal truths about family, loyalty, devotion, and love.
From the Hardcover edition.
In Lauren Grodstein's debut novel, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love, Joel Miller spends a Saturday afternoon standing outside the bathroom door of the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his girlfriend as she takes a pregnancy test to determine their fate as parents, and ultimately as a couple. To occupy the time (both Miller's and our own), Grodstein takes us on a journey through Miller's 28 years, a trip which starts with his father's departure and his mother's madness, continues in a cheap apartment in Queens where he falls in love with a high society girl from Park Avenue, and finally culminates back in the Brooklyn bathroom. Along the way, Grodstein does a commendable job of interpreting the male perspective on grief, ecstasy, love, and eventually heartbreak over the one that got away ("And yet, while Miller is grateful for all the good things about this girl, he finds it troubling that, taken as a whole, they are usually no challenge to the memory of the girl who came before her.").
In many ways, Joel Miller is reminiscent of most modern heroes (and heroines) of contemporary fiction--he's a recent college graduate, he works for a dot com, ruminates on his failed romances, and comes from a typically dysfunctional family. When looked at from this angle, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love is not entirely original in its scope. However, Grodstein's voice is honest, and Miller is quirky enough to basically sustain our interest throughout the novel. Even when Miller's story becomes a bit whiny, secondary characters like Stan, Miller's tragically comical father, and Grant, his investment banker best friend, add enough flavor to the mix to keep readers engaged.
Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love is a valiant debut, and readers can look forward to Grodstein's future efforts as she continues to develop her unique voice.--Gisele Toueg
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