by Amy Sohn
Not necessarily a sequel to her earlier book, Prospect Park West, but we do catch up on the lives of several characters that made an appearance in the novel about moms in the hipster Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope. They grapple with the standard urban mom issues: finding a life after divorce, keeping a marriage fresh & exciting, dealing with the betrayal of infidelity (your partner’s and your own), and revitalizing an acting career (that’s pretty standard right?).
Men have a greater role in Motherland than they did in Prospect Park West with the introduction of a gay couple adopting another child into their already shaky family unit and through the early mid-life crisis of a screenwriter on the verge of his big break.
I liked this book much more than the last one as the characters rang slightly truer and the insider New York humor was more biting. The subplot of the serial neighborhood stroller thief was quite funny. However, when it comes to matters of race, Sohn likes to throw a storyline in that seems like an afterthought of stereotypes, just like the last book.