From the moment Emma Sutton walks into the FitzCoopers auction house, the disgraced media darling knows exactly what she wants: an antique dining table. What she gets is a chance to set things right.
Fresh from a yearlong stretch in prison, Emma finds her life just as she left it - filled with glittering business successes, bruising personal defeats, rolling television cameras, and awkward Sunday dinners at home. She needs a clean slate - a second chance that might be provided by two unlikely saviors: Benjamin Blackman, a terminally charming social worker and Emma's part-time assistant, and one of Benjamin's most heartbreaking wards, an overweight little girl from Queens named Gracie.
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Philip Galanes' Emma's Table starts off as a pleasant ripped-from-the-headlines story about a disgraced domestic diva (think Martha Stewart). About a quarter of the way through, once all of the characters have been introduced, it quickly disappoints - all of the characters are hollow.
Emma Sutton, the disgraced domestic diva, is an unimaginative copy of Martha Stewart right down to the ex-husband, daughter and the one-year prison sentence for tax evasion and lying to the Feds. Benjamin Blackman is not in the least bit 'charming', he's actually clueless and spineless. Gracie's character is immature for a nine-year-old of above average intelligence. Tina, Gracie's mother is the most believable character. It's easy to emphasize with her feelings of failure because of her inability to keep Gracie's weight under control.
Gracie's supposed weight issues are unbelievable. She 20 pounds overweight at just a little over 4 feet tall and described as obese. I have a hard time believing that 20 pounds can class a child as obese, maybe chubby would be a better description?
The last chapter is a cop out, plain and simple. At the end of the previous chapter the plot reaches climax,when Emma finds out her husband is living a separate life in a secret apartment, and Tina confronts Benjamin about his accusation that she's feeding Gracie junk food to intentionally keep her weight up. Then in the next chapter, which takes place a week later, all of these crises have been wrapped up nice and neat.
This novel is poorly thought out.
2/5
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