cover image The Meryl Streep Movie Club

The Meryl Streep Movie Club

Mia March. S&S/Gallery, $15 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-4516-5539-1

Art imitates art in March’s impossibly romantic debut about lost-and-found love and a frayed family repairing itself with the help of platitudes plucked from Streep’s prolific oeuvre. Streep’s films are as “good as a chicken soup, a best friend, a therapist, and a stiff drink,” Maine bed-and-breakfast owner Lolly Weller insists, regarding the regular viewings she holds at Maine’s quaint Three Captains’ Inn, where she raised daughter Kat, now 25, and nieces Isabel, 31, and June, 28 (the three trade narration duties), after a car crash on New Year’s Eve killed Lolly’s husband, sister, and brother-in-law. Fifteen years after the accident, Lolly summons the women to tell them she has cancer. By now, each is struggling with her own heartache: Isabel’s failed marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Edward; single mom June’s search for her son’s dad; and baking artisan Kat’s ambivalence about marrying her best friend, Oliver. Streep’s films have answers for all, including Lolly, who has a secret of her own to work out. There are no surprises, no problems too tough, nor men too insensitive, in this paean to Streep and happy endings. Consume with a bowl of popcorn and plenty of hankies. Agent: Alexis Hurly, Inkwell Management. (June)