Addled: A Novel

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Angle of Approach : Part 1
Eden Rock Country Club is a grand New England institution, a lush haven of leisure and cocktails, where gossip and intrigue lurk discreetly behind a veil of old-world propriety. But one Fourth of July, a flock of geese descends on the club's manicured law

Chapter 1: The Angle of Approach : Part 2
It could be a golf ball on Saturday morning, or it could be a baseball tuned in to the radio in an air- conditioned Land Rover. It could be a football on a home- theater screen as they fended off another sleety New England winter on tufted- leather sofas.

Reading Group Guide
Food and hunger play a major role in Addled. Everyone obsesses about it in one way or another. Dr. Nicastro will eat anything, Phoebe almost nothing, and Vita wrestles with the moral issues of being a chef.

Eden Rock Country Club is a grand New England institution, a lush haven of leisure and cocktails, where gossip and intrigue lurk discreetly behind a veil of old-world propriety. But one Fourth of July, a flock of geese descends on the club's manicured lawns; never fond of outsiders, the Eden Rock denizens find these new guests distinctly unwelcome. When Charles Lambert, a bond trader with a strong portfolio but a weak golf game, accidentally kills a goose with a wayward drive, he sets in motion a series of events that will leave the club and its members changed forever.

His wife, Madeline, must face the mutterings of other members about the state of her marriage - and his sanity. Meanwhile, their daughter, an animal rights activist, mounts a quixotic campaign to make the club go vegan, much to the annoyance of Vita, a talented, obsessive chef who has her own plans for the geese. A deftly observed social comedy, Addled is a rich and riotous story of old money, new ideas, and the power of passion to disrupt even the most orderly of worlds.

I was never one of those writers who always knew she wanted to write, or for that matter, always wrote. I was born in the Bronx, but our family moved to a Westchester suburb when I was in the second grade. Our back yard abutted the Pleasantville Country Club golf course, a very modest, snack shack sort of place.

Oddly, I don't ever remember seeing any golfers, but they must have been there invading my dreams.

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