One entry on the author's list of the most dysfunctional parents in literature, as shared at the Huffington Post:Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn, 2009, and the sequel, Motherland, 2012Read about another entry on the list.
The novel that had Park Slope mommies up way past their bedtimes, Prospect Park West, is the queen of dysfunctional mom fiction. Those same mothers who stayed up late turning pages might have gone along with the herd the next day at the playground, dismissing the four mother characters, not wanting to lose face in front of the sancti-mommies in their playgroup. But in secret, with the bedroom door closed (and maybe the child-proof lock latched), mom readers devoured chapter after chapter of Amy Sohn's urban parenting tale, making it a bestseller. As much as readers, particularly mothers, criticized Prospect Park West's four protagonists--Melora Leigh, Rebecca Rose, Karen Bryan Shapiro, Lizzie O'Donnell--I'm willing to bet Amy Sohn's dysfunctional mama drama, as well as its sequel, Motherland, held a mirror up to many readers' faces, daring them to recognize their own flaws, or look away.
The Page 69 Test: Motherland.
--Marshal Zeringue
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