Fly Away Home an All Too Familiar Tale

Author:  Jennifer Weiner
Title:  Fly Away Home
Publisher:  Atria Books

Are they a family or a photo op? That's what Senator Richard Woodruff's wife and daughters have to decide in the new novel from New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Weiner. In a story as familiar as yesterday's headlines (or CBS's The Good Wife), the Senator becomes the latest politician caught making headlines for an extramarital affair. Fly Away Home is the story of what happens to the family once that story moves off the front page.

Wife Sylvie spent years transforming herself from hippie chick law student to perfect politician's wife. In the process, she sacrificed her life on the altar of her husband. Career, family, even her taste buds (Sylvie is always on a diet), have all taken second fiddle to Richard's success. But now he's betrayed her trust ... for a dumpy young woman who's not even pretty! So was all Sylvie's sacrifice meaningless? She has almost four hundred pages to decide.

Sylvie and Robert have two daughters, and they're almost as stereotypical as Sylvie's life. Diana, the eldest, is an emergency room physician. She's married—not happily—and the mother of a charmingly nerdy grade-school son, Milo. Diana is having an affair of her own, with a surgery resident at the hospital. It's hot and heavy (and so is the prose describing their encounters), leaving her damp, dull husband out in the cold.

Younger daughter Lizzie just got out of rehab after a lengthy love affair with drugs. She's clean and sober now, and working as Milo's nanny. In theory, this would be a great way for her to ease back into society with her sister's home as a sort of half-way house. In practice, the girls don't really get along and Lizzie constantly finds herself in violation of Diana's interminable list of rules for Milo. (He, poor kid, would just be happy with the occasional visit to McDonald's or a few minutes of television.) On the plus side, Lizzie does take up with Jeff, a nice young man who gives tours at the Liberty Bell.

Meanwhile, the self-absorbed Senator is a little confused over all the fuss. "There wasn't any fiscal impropriety, no taxpayer dollars…" Why does anyone care that he got his mistress a job? She was qualified. What's the big deal? "You would have liked her," he assured Lizzie, "Under different circumstances." Richard may be brilliant on Senate floor, but he's clueless when it comes to real life.

The "home" of the title is Sylvie's family estate in Connecticut. The women of the family—plus Milo—all end up there together, each nursing her own secret. Eventually, all those secrets come out as the Woodruff women learn how to live with their new realities.

As novels go, Fly Away Home was OK. Personally, I prefer tales with less explicit sex and more likeable characters. Speaking of explicit, I wouldn't read it on an empty stomach—the meal descriptions practically qualify as food porn. If you enjoy a little scandal with dinner, this may be the book for you. Me? I'll fly away to the bookstore for another option.