In the overly precious third novel from Train Go Sorry
author Hager Cohen, Beatrice “Bebe” Fisher-Hart is the almost 20-year-old only child of two coolly articulate Boston therapists. Bebe's parents duly swallow their mortification and allow her to remain at home, all expenses paid, when she decides to defer college to have a serious go at acting, like her estranged maternal grandmother, Margaret Fourcey. A retired theater actress with a legendary reputation, Margaret lives just across the Charles River, but Bebe hardly sees her and knows little about her life or her estrangement from the family. When Bebe finds out her revered father may have been professionally inappropriate, she lashes out in disillusion and anger, and takes refuge with Margaret. Her paternalistic relationship with theater director Hale Rubin, a 50-ish member of her grandmother's “salon,” deepens. Hale is an idealized character, tailor-made to fill the gap left by Bebe's father's fall from grace, and Bebe, while more-or-less sanguinely tempered, is just this side of annoyingly narcissistic. Bebe's struggles are believable, but the hothouse atmosphere makes the stakes feel small, and Bebe herself something less than likable. (July)
