BOOKS WITH NICKY PELLEGRINO
A MOTHER CROSSES THE LINE FOR HER CHILD
How far would you go to help your child succeed? That is the intriguing question this novel is designed to leave you asking.
Where the Grass is Green is the tale of two sisters who seem to have it all. Peyton Marcus is a morning TV host in New York and her life is glossy and moneyed. Her sister Skye leads a slightly more homespun but still privileged existence in the wealthy suburb of Paradise.
The crux of the story is that Peyton, who usually never puts a foot wrong, has taken a serious misstep. She has paid a bribe to help her daughter Max get a place at a top university – ironically the teenager is smart and would have got in anyway. When word gets out and scandal breaks, the perfect lives of the Marcus sisters begin to unravel.
There is a lot not to like about Peyton – such as her willingness to let her husband take the fall for her serious misdemeanour, the pressures she puts on her daughter and the denial she often finds herself in. As for Skye, well, she too is hiding things. By the end, these two women will be forced to look into their pasts as they face the choices they have made.
The plot here is influenced by a real-life college admissions scandal involving Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison after admitting to paying to have her daughter’s exam responses secretly corrected. While I enjoyed this exploration of the reasons a wealthy mother might do such a thing, I don’t know that I ever connected thoroughly enough with
Peyton and Skye, or their problems. Daughter Max, living with the fall-out of her mother’s behaviour, seemed a lot more real.
Lauren Weisberger’s debut novel, The Devil Wears Prada, was a huge bestseller and made into a hit film starring Meryl Streep. I suspect that nothing she has written since has been quite as fresh and fascinating.
Still, there is plenty of juicy drama here, the writing is slick and witty, and the story races along, so it’s a fun and thought-provoking read.