Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough

A recession-battered baby boomer divorcée struggles to keep it together after her mother moves in and her ex knocks up his much younger girlfriend in Pennebaker's sharp hen lit debut (after several YA novels). After the recession wipes out her savings, widowed Ivy moves in with daughter Joanie, who is recently divorced. Joanie's life is riddled with stress: she's saddled with making a living at a job she fears she can't do; worries that she'll never get past her divorce; and is constantly at odds with her cantankerous mother and her teenage daughter, Caroline. Spoiled, awkward Caroline lashes out at her one friend as often as she does her mother, and she's disgusted that her father is planning to marry a woman half his age after getting her pregnant, though Caroline does feel an unlikely kinship with her stepmother-to-be. There's a rare honesty in Pennebaker's work that allows for both empathy and ample schadenfreude as the women examine themselves and each other, and their inner lives have a winning warts-and-all air of authenticity. Pennebaker's effort delivers right through to its hopeful but realistic conclusion. (Jan.)