The Best of Enemies
By Jen Lancaster
New American Library. 320 pp. $25.95
Jen Lancaster's privileged life screeched to a halt in 2001 when she lost her corporate job and was reduced to selling off her designer handbags. What's a former high-flier to do? Start a blog, of course. And while many blogs of the early aughties are now lost to the ether, her online fiefdom, Jennsylvania.com, remains strong. It's a smart, snarky, hilarious online home where Lancaster never pretends to be anything other than who she is: pretty, vain, well-groomed, overweight, married, dog-obsessed, luxury-loving, curious and a community-building force of nature.
In best-selling essay collections such as "Bitter Is the New Black," "Such a Pretty Fat" and "The Tao of Martha," Lancaster argues that women should be permitted to experience and act on anger even when wearing twinsets and tasteful earrings — and that's not a message women hear very often.
It's also a tough message to translate to fiction, where angry heroines traditionally receive short shrift, especially when they refuse to accommodate societal expectations. Lancaster's 2013 novel "Here I Go Again" featured a grown-up, nasty high school homecoming queen who learned karmic lessons by time-traveling back to her heyday. It was satisfying to see this heroine eat humble pie, but her voice wasn't entirely convincing.
But in "The Best of Enemies," Lancaster's fourth novel, she enriches another implausible plot with a completely assured dual perspective. The titular enemies speak in alternating chapters with a cheeky mix of hubris and humor. Kitty Carricoe, perfectionist stay-at-home mom, was once very close to Jacqueline Jordan, a hard-bitten war correspondent. They parted ways in a huff, but when their mutual friend Sarabeth suffers a crisis, they come to her rescue — and learn they have to endure each other's presence to solve the mystery of why Sarabeth's husband seems to have absconded with the family money.
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While the two narrators are quite different, each echoes a facet of the Lancaster voice that her readers know and love.
Kitty on Jack’s career: “I’m just saying Miss World Traveler might want to ratchet the level of self-satisfaction down a thousand notches or so for those of us too busy raising fine young Americans to faff on about other continents.”
Jack on Kitty’s breath: “Honestly, I was expecting notes of creosote, not Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum.”
You’ll laugh a lot reading this book as the protagonists learn more about each other — and much more about themselves. Lancaster, the voice for many women of her generation, is giving voice to their psyches through fiction.
As her frenemy Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”
Patrick is a freelance writer and critic who tweets @TheBookMaven.
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