Spencer aims for edgy in a debut that tosses addiction and a steamy lesbian love affair into the standard metropolitan-mommy fiction mix. Ellie Fuller, a former stand-up comic and recovering bulimic, adores her sweet, libidinous husband, Peter, and their two darling children. But when the West Side Manhattan couple decide to enroll their three-year-old in an exclusive East Side playgroup, Ellie's seemingly perfect, post–12-step life begins to unravel. Initially feeling both "superior and intimidated" in the company of the glitzy playgroup mothers ("they all know each other and they all speak French"), Ellie becomes friends and then, improbably, lovers, with Missy Hanover, a beautiful heiress who maintains her irresistible self-possession through a full staff and an old-money prestige unavailable to Ellie's self-made husband. As Ellie spends more and more time with Missy, she lies to hide her bulimic past as well as her working-class background, alcoholic mother and incarcerated father. Spencer deftly chronicles Ellie's growing desperation as she deceives her lover and her husband, increasingly neglects her kids and struggles to resist her desires to binge and purge ("the toilet bowl was calling her—hungry, begging to be fed"). Though it's sure to be compared to The Nanny Diaries for its setting, subject and relentless class-consciousness, Spencer's sex-filled debut isn't as funny: there are smirk-worthy descriptions, but the cattiness grows wearisome. Spencer, like her protagonist, is a former stand-up comic, but the book feels more like a study of attraction, lies and self-destruction than a fun, light read. (Sept.)
