Surrender, Dorothy: A Novel

Thirty-year-old Sara Swerdlow and her friends Adam, Maddy, and Peter spend every August in a run-down rental by the beach, re-experiencing in these regular escapes from real life their one-time college intimacy--that peculiar closeness born of cohabitation and limited responsibility that most of us lose at graduation. This year the cast of characters is expanded: Maddy and Peter, long married, have added a baby to the mix, and Sara's closest friend Adam, now a successful playwright, has brought along his uncommonly handsome new boyfriend Shawn. Their first evening at the house this year, Sara and Adam make an ice cream run. On the way back, a tub of soft-serve vanilla successfully secured from the local Fro-Z-Cone, Sara is killed in a car accident. Surrender, Dorothy is the story of the effect of Sara's death on this circle of friends and on her mother Natalie, Sara's life-long confidante, who joins the party at the beach for a weeks-long immersion in collective grief. While her characters bicker and mourn in this sometimes oppressive atmosphere, Wolitzer explores the network of their relationships, with one another and with Sara. While the subject matter of the book is of course sad, the final product is not unbearably so. Readers like myself who shy away from depressing novels need not fear this one. Wolitzer, meanwhile, as I discovered also when reading her novel The Wife, is capable of some very fine prose, rich in detail. Very often her descriptions are spot on, depicting in few words the essence of some banal item, for example, such as the "cool, dented metal surface" of the Fro-Z-Cone counter. Every now and then, however, Wolitzer's descriptions go too far, and the reader is distracted by some improbable comparison: "Then, during pushing, that two-hour period of time during which Maddy began to hallucinate a roll of theater tickets unspooling from her [body] [okay, that's a bit improbable too, but not what I'm talking about]. Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

The novel is a wrenching page-turner about a woman's loss of an adult daughter and her subsequent attempts to cope and live. The author artfully describes experiences of the mother and the dead woman's friends as they provide each other with memories and support needed to adapt to the sudden death of a young woman whom they loved. It is the best book I have read all year!

Meg Wolitzer delves deep into the hearts of a group of friends who are enjoying a summer respite in a somewhat rundown "summer home" on the coast. When Sara, the most beautiful of them, is suddenly killed one evening in a fluke car accident, the lives of those left slowly begin to unravel like an old sweater. Each is left with guilt and memories too large to be contained in the tiny, forlorn house they have rented. When Sara's mother, Natalie, arrives unexpectedly one afternoon, she sets into motion the undoing of the entire household. On the way, though, each person learns a little more about themselves, their relationship with Sara, and mostly, about the world which they have created. Wolitzer has a keen insight into the human heart in grief, and displays her stunning talent here with poise and delicateness.

Reading this novel I felt as if the author was one of my best friends. Meg Wolitzer is just so spot-on in her portrayals of the characters in Surrender, Dorothy that they were as familiar to me as my own roommates. I've liked all of Wolitzer's novels--she writes exquisitely and always cracks me up--but this novel about a young woman's early death and how it affects the people around her, especially her best friend (her mom) is one of her best. It is witty (puns aplenty) but so totally real. Everyone has to deal with a freak tragedy here in their own way, and Wolitzer carries us through her characters' transitions from shock to acceptance and transcendence beautifully. I hope the author is hard at work on her next novel. She's great company and I can't wait to see who she dreams up for me to hang out with next!

I loved this book -- it's among Wolitzer's best. The writing is sharp, funny and epigrammatic, the characters rich, the plot full of twists and turns. I can't wait for the movie!