Amy Sohn's new book, Prospect Park West, comes out on September 1, and I'm dying to get my hands on a copy.
According to the Daily News:
"The book creates a scathing portrait of Park Slope's mommy brigade
— of which Sohn is a breast-feeding member — as a parade of
unsatisfied thirty- and forty-something moms sizing up their plights
relative to all the other stroller-pushers at the playground. Few are
having sex — at least not with their spouses."
Seems that Sarah Jessica Parker optioned the book for a TV series—not a movie as I previously reported.
The story is about a character named Melora Leigh, a two-time Oscar winner who lives in a mansion on Prospect Park West with her Australian husband. Sounds a little like Jennifer Connelly.
I heard Sohn read a chapter from the book at the Edgy Mother's Day reading in which Sohn parodies the Park Slope Food Coop, Park Slopers and local celebs.
Interestingly, most of the celebrities, in this celebrity strewn novel, are called by their real names.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Melora's arch rival and nemisis is described in the book (according to the Daily News) as a "skinny
hipster who was famous only because she'd flashed her t- -s in
'Secretary.' "
"I think we make it very clear in the disclaimer," says Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal told the Daily News.
That provision partly reads: "Although several well-known people
appear in this book, the references to them, their conduct and their
interactions with other characters are wholly the author's creation."
Have you read the excerpt on Gawker? Awful awful writing–a string of hollow cliches. Your middle schooler or mine could’ve done way better; it sounded like a send-up of “chick lit.” I suggest that Park Slope, with its mighty supplies of literary talent, stage a pre-emptive snark strike!