October 15, 2017
A nine-time Moth StorySLAM champion, Greathead flutters in with a debut starring Laura, born on Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, who returns to raise her daughter within the confines of the private-school-by-winter, Hamptons-by-summer world she had renounced.
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January 1, 2018
Fifteen years in the life of a woman who is constitutionally out of step with her privileged New York family.We meet Laura in 1980, waking up from a nightmare, thinking it would be nice if she had a husband to discuss it with. The only other time she misses having a partner is if something breaks around the apartment after 9 p.m., too late to call the super. Laura is an odd duck in many ways. She has little interest in clothes, "but what people assumed was her absentminded ignorance of fashion" is actually ecological conscientiousness. Since everything she owns will one day end up in a landfill, she avoids acquisition as much as possible. In 1979, the fashion-on-the-street photographer Bill Cunningham took a picture of her in a Laura Ashley skirt, white turtleneck, and Frye boots; she is still talking about it, and wearing the same outfit, in 1995. Though she rejects her family's lifestyle in some respects, she does take their money and holds a job at the museum now located in her great-grandfather's mansion. Wedding coordination is a position for which she is quite unsuited, but because of the special allowances the library makes due to her connections, she will never leave. In this very quiet life of hers, one thunderbolt strikes. In her single experience of sexual intercourse, which occurs under conditions which are both very sad and very funny, she gets pregnant. Reproduction is certainly not part of her plan to save the planet, but on the day of her scheduled abortion, a sparrow gets into her room and changes her mind. So all-by-herself Laura becomes Laura and Emma, per the title of Greathead's debut. Although having a child should by all rights open the windows of Laura's life, it doesn't. Her daughter, on the other hand, turns out to be a totally different sort of person.This ultimately rather mysterious book, with its attenuated plot and restrained humor, is like a person who speaks so softly that you end up paying very close attention.
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January 22, 2018
In Greathead’s warmhearted debut novel, spanning 1980 to 1995, Laura, a quiet woman in her early 30s from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, attempts to balance her progressive ideals with the lavish lifestyle she lives thanks to a trust fund. After a one-night stand with her brother’s friend leads to pregnancy, Laura tries to forge a life for herself and her daughter, Emma, on her own terms—while also staying near home and accepting the help of her old-money family. The supporting characters who come in and out of Laura’s life over the years sparkle with idiosyncrasies, especially Laura’s mother, Bibs, and Emma’s devoted pediatrician. The novel is told in short scenes; major events can happen off the page, as with the death of a loved one, which is revealed by a scene set at the reception held after the funeral. Greathead is a talented writer of detail, particularly in her evocations of New York life—subway sobbing, could-be celebrity sightings, the joy of a favorite grocery store—and specifically of New York’s elite—board meetings, private preschool admissions, “the impermeable serenity of a Manhattan courtyard,” and the specific difference between an address on 96th and Park and 96th and Lexington. This is a thoughtful novel of trying to find oneself despite an assigned place in the world. Agent: Amy Williams, the Williams Company.