The parent trap

AYELET WALDMAN -- mother of four, author of six “Mommy-Track” mysteries and now two literary novels, blogger and Salon columnist, former Los Angeles federal public defender -- has made it her mission to combat what she calls “the perfect-mother myth.”

Waldman is provocative and often rashly frank in public explorations of her guilt-ridden pull between personal fulfillment and motherhood. In her first online column for Salon last year, the openly bipolar author wrote about the affinity for self-disclosure she tapped into with her “bad-mother” blog: “Almost immediately I discovered in myself a confessional impulse, a compulsive need to haul open the tattered edges of my emotional raincoat and expose the nasty parts lurking beneath.” She created an uproar when she confessed in a “Modern Love” column in the New York Times that she could see herself surviving the death of one of her children more easily than that of her husband, writer Michael Chabon.

The wonder of Waldman’s two literary novels is that she manages to discipline her volubility to create well-paced, cleanly written, moving narratives that dramatize her deep concerns about child-rearing. She has her characters do the mouthing-off for her as they confront -- and overcome -- parental nightmares such as drug arrests, infant death and seemingly unlovable offspring.

“Daughter’s Keeper” (2003) drew on Waldman’s experience as a public defender with a compelling story about a flawed mother-daughter relationship set against the backdrop of a criminal justice system’s misguided approach to drug control and inappropriate mandatory sentencing.

In her new book, “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” -- very much a novel despite a title suggestive of a short-story collection -- Waldman hews to the domestic front. Her literary models are Sue Miller and Dani Shapiro, authors of psychologically driven family dramas that question the piety that women need look no further than their children for satisfaction. Her work also shares some of British writer Rachel Cusk’s acerbic wit. Cusk, however, presents an unrepentantly bleak view of the parent trap, whereas Waldman, inherently more sentimental and guilt-prone, softens her stance with more hopeful conclusions.

Waldman’s narrator, 32-year-old Emilia Greenleaf, bears more than a passing resemblance to her creator: pugnacious, short, red-haired, edgy, intelligent, difficult, Harvard Law-educated and, by their own admission, self-absorbed and insecure -- but also likable.

Emilia’s predicament is that she fell madly in love with her boss, Jack Woolf, broke up his marriage and finds her 5-year-old know-it-all stepson, William, “insufferable.” Worse, she recently experienced the loss of her newborn daughter.

“I am Jack’s red Porsche,” she states with typical brutal directness. “It’s all very trite and seedy, sordid and humiliating, except that I love him.” Her relentless despair over her baby Isabel’s death exacerbates matters. Jack’s beautiful, icy ex-wife, Carolyn, preys on and compounds Emilia’s self-doubts by launching a steady volley of hostilities, often transmitted through William, her “little mouthpiece, her surrogate goad.” Three months after Isabel’s death, Emilia cannot bring herself to go back to work or see babies without breaking down. Her responsibility to pick up her stepson from nursery school on Wednesdays, his nanny’s day off, has become the Everest in the middle of her week.

Waldman’s novel is set on the wealthy Upper West and East sides of Manhattan, a culture she captures with blistering accuracy, from the strict segregation of nannies and mothers at after-school pickup to the intensity of the private-school admissions process, in which 5-year-olds and their parents panic that they won’t get into Harvard. But it’s the 843 acres that divide the two sides of town -- Central Park -- that takes center stage in her story. Central Park is at once Emilia’s sanctuary, stomping ground, childhood memory bank and sand trap. Central Park is where she must resolve her issues not only with her husband and stepson but also with her philandering but well-meaning father. Waldman’s book is, among other things, a valentine to Manhattan’s great playground.

One of the pleasures of “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” is Waldman’s incisive sendup of hyper-parenting, which erodes the carefree joys of childhood with its overprotectiveness and paranoia: “the intricate eating disorders of neurotic East Side matrons,” which result in imagined lactose intolerances and allergies that put ice cream and cupcakes unnecessarily off limits; the demonization of television and videos; the acute vigilance against exposure to sun, rain, germs and all possible dangers that makes ice-skating without a helmet a reportable crime. Carolyn insists that Emilia must strap William into a car seat before taking him across town, but the unwieldy equipment repels taxis as effectively as garlic repels vampires; cabdrivers balk at the extra time its installation will require. Yet public transportation is out, especially during flu season -- as William shrilly informs her when she suggests that option on a rainy day.

William is a wonderful creation, at once annoyingly pedantic, “like a very small sixty-two-year-old man,” and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Emilia upbraids herself for her failure to be charmed by him, even when she recognizes that much of what enrages her is Carolyn’s doing and that they “have both vested in him so much more power than any small boy should have.” She writes, “I am the adult and so I should be able to love this child despite his peculiarities, and despite my own guilt for having wrecked his home.” William, meanwhile, “prods and pokes until I satisfy their low expectations, until I prove once again that I am a terrible person.” He raises hackles by suggesting that Emilia sell Isabel’s baby equipment on EBay and by telling Emilia that she isn’t sophisticated because she comes from New Jersey.

Like most self-indulgent whiners, Emilia tends to repeat herself, but Waldman keeps her complaints fresh with snappy self-deprecation. When neighbors try to engage her in conversation, she thinks, “Don’t they realize that obsessive self-pity is an all-consuming activity that leaves no room for conversation?”

“Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” can be gobbled up in just a sitting or two, zipping along toward its dependably cathartic climax. In sharp contrast with the messy impulsiveness of her confessionals, Waldman’s novel is tidy enough to earn a Good Housekeeping seal of approval: Her psychological analyses are pat and her resolutions are shipshape. If you’re looking for the dust of nuance, run your finger elsewhere.