Yes, life is messy. ‘The Sweet Spot’ finds joy in chaos
The sweet spot in the title of Amy Poeppel’s fourth novel refers to a grungy Greenwich Village bar, a beloved neighborhood fixture with battered wood floors, rickety tables and a pungent smell of beer. Its handsome owner is Dan, “a laid-back, decent, extremely chill” single dad who helpfully steers customers clear of the house wine. It’s a good name for a bar but an even better name for a warm and charming comedy of manners that hits every note just right.
Above the bar live Lauren and Leo, their three young children, and a poorly behaved dog. Lauren is a ceramic artist whose porcelains sport signature grotesqueries, usually of a squirmy sort, such as a teapot with “a revolting brown worm crawling along the spout,” and “a slug depicted on the underside.” Her career is in sudden ascendancy, thanks to self-absorbed Felicity, who hosts an HGTV-style television show and carries Lauren’s pieces in her Madison Avenue boutique. Leo is a lovable and slightly scattered academic who develops software that attracts the eye of Elon Musk. He’s a helpful partner to Lauren and an engaged dad who conducts science experiments with the kids – like determining how much interior pressure a pumpkin can withstand before it blows up, spraying the wallpaper with pulp.
Lauren is struggling to keep up with demand without some child-care help, and around this dilemma the wacky and delightful plot revolves. Rare is the novel, comic or otherwise, that so accurately captures mother, who arrives from Wellesley, Massachusetts, with matching accessories from Brooks Brothers as gifts for the kids. She is there, ostensibly, to help but winds up contributing to the stress. Noise from the bar below, as well as possible mold, dust and drafty windows, are just some of the triggers for her complaints. “As soon as I walked back in this cluttered house, I got a sharp pain behind my right eye,” she laments.
A viral video, an abandoned baby, a surprising number of rodents and various relationship problems are among the entangled plot points. Poeppel puts more planes in the air than an ambitious air traffic controller, yet manages to gracefully land each one. This frenzy brings to mind Allison Pearson’s “I Don’t Know How She
Does It.” But with its multiple storylines, “The
Sweet Spot” is more complex, echoing Jenny Jackson’s forthcoming “Pineapple Street,” with real estate – brownstones in particular – playing a starring role.
One of the funniest storylines involves Melinda, an unhinged school receptionist, who has reacted badly to the implosion of her 20-plus-year marriage and is intent on making life for everyone around her a living hell. Coincidentally, she works at the same school that Lauren’s children attend. Lauren unwittingly contributed to the demise of Melinda’s marriage when she gave Felicity some misconstrued advice about following her heart in deciding whether to keep the baby she conceived while having an affair with Melinda’s husband. Once Melinda learns of this connection, she uses her administrative powers to deluge Lauren with Kafkaesque school-related tasks, asking her to rescan and reupload medical forms and immunization records, fill out long surveys, and acquire randomly specific things on short notice, such as empty tennis ball canisters. She also assigns Lauren a stint with the school pets.
“Lauren’s name had been selected at random to take all the school gerbils home for an upcoming long weekend. There were twelve of them.” Three of the gerbils, the email continued, “needed a daily anti-diarrheal medication to treat wet tail. One was presumed pregnant.”
Melinda softens, Evelyn evolves, Lauren exerts more agency over her career: The complex web of plot points resolve, the planes returning safely to their hangars. “The Sweet Spot” is smart, sparkling and very very funny.
Don’t let it slip past you unread.