Book Review

By Derryll White

Lippman, Laura (2023).  Prom Mom.

“If you wanted to have a future, you had to let go of the past.”       – Laura Lippman.

‘Prom  Mom’ has a strong pandemic focus.  Perhaps cities felt the restrictions more – that certainly seems to be the case in Baltimore, Maryland.  The author touches on the archetypal images such as shortages of toilet paper and paper towels, but it is the feeling of enclosure, of separation, that overrides all in this story.  Joe and Meredith, key characters, struggle and plan to find outdoor space away from people.  That is not a problem here in East Kootenay.

All their lives are paused. Really! Maybe interrupted a little, inconvenienced slightly by lockdown procedures, but paused? Not here. The author touches briefly, but conclusively, on many social norms – fatherhood, cheating, body alteration. Again these somehow seem more urban and remote, like the idea of the Kardashians. Not quite of this valley, town or time.

Laura Lippman is an insightful writer. She hits a great many hot buttons quite succinctly – things people unconsciously dwell on.  She brings clarity to these small points. The overall sweep of the story, however, seems slightly maudlin. Guy gets girl, marries her, then gets another and another.  Business decisions go bad. Then at the last moment the author tweaks the story unbelievably. It is masterful. Laura Lippman is, as the book’s cover claims, “a distinctive voice in mystery fiction.”  Readers will enjoy ‘Prom Mom’.

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Excerpts from the novel:

PLASTIC SURGEON – She wasn’t crazy about having God credited for her work.  God, even if one was a believer, had failed the child.  Meredith was picking up the slack.  Did that make her superior to God?

HIGH SCHOOL – … and it was her choice to avoid close friendships.  Amber survived high school by pretending she was an alien who needed to pass unnoticed in this human world until she was called back to the mothership.

INEQUITY – Meredith was not disingenuous about race in general or New Orleans’s problematic history in particular.  She knew that her parents’ house, in its early life, had availed itself of the labor of people of color, and that those workers had not been paid a fair wage for their services, much less treated well.  That inequity lived in the bones of the house, in its soil, but then – it lived in the soil of the United States.

SOCIETAL PRESSURE – Amber was fascinated by the society girls who participated in the old rite and wondered if it would survive much longer.  In a world where so much was being questioned – rituals, words, monuments – how long could the Rex and Comus balls continue?

RENAMING – They had walked last weekend at Lake Roland, formerly Robert E. Lee Park.  (Joe groused about what he called the “mania” of renaming, but Meredith thought it was progressive to recognize how harmful these tributes were.)

FATHER – Joe didn’t want to be a father.  Technically, had he been a father?  He thought about that from time to time.  Did impregnating someone make you a father, or was that something you became during a child’s life?  Did you have to show up to be a father, toss a ball, attend activities, coach Little League?

CHEATING – … she had known when he suggested this meeting what the subtext was.  Men didn’t ask to come and drink wine in a woman’s backyard out of mere friendship.  And the men who made such suggestions were seldom first-timers.

POLITICS – Could he —?  She would not be the least bit surprised to learn he had voted for Trump in 2016.  Misogyny was a hell of a drug.  But would he do it again after the last four years?

WOMEN – She felt as if something had been taken from her.  Was there not to be a female president in her mother’s lifetime?  Or maybe even her lifetime?  Why did women have to wait so long for everything?

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org

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