Word: suburban
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BOOKS: Aloft is a flawless meditation on suburban splendor...
...burn and the world on a string. Jerry works part time at a travel agency, but just to keep busy. His handsome son runs the family business; his lovely daughter is getting married. For kicks he takes his little three-seater Cessna up to fly around in circles over suburban Long Island. Life is swell...
...around, but Lee gets a lot of power out of it, and the airy, appealing innocence of Jerry's voice buoys the novel whenever it's in danger of sinking. As Aloft follows Jerry through his daily rounds and bemused reminiscences, you're gently lulled into a sense of suburban security by his good-humored apercus, until--bam!--the scariness of life surges into view like water from a ruptured main: a miserable ex-girlfriend pops a fistful of OxyContin, or someone chokes on a turkey bone, or a memory surfaces unbidden of a cop bringing Daisy home...
...Jerry, a landscaping contractor, thinks in better prose than most English professors write--come on, give Lee some room to play in, he'll make it up to you. The glossy flawlessness of Lee's prose is itself a metaphor, a symbol of the superficial perfection of America's suburban splendor. Even though you can barely see the fault lines and stress fractures just below the surface, somehow it makes you feel them that much more keenly...
More moms today are deciding to stay home from the rat race to raise the kids. When TIME featured the SUBURBAN WIFE on its cover in 1960, few women even knew there was a choice...