The Smart One

With her best-selling debut, _Girls in White Dresses_ (An “irresistible,

pitch-perfect first novel” — _Marie Claire_ ), Jennifer Close captured

friendship in those what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life years of early

adulthood. Now, with her sparkling new novel of parenthood and sibling

rivalry, Close turns her gimlet eye to the only thing messier than friendship:

family.

Weezy Coffey’s parents had always told her she was the smart one, while her

sister was the pretty one. “Maureen will marry well,” their mother said, but

instead it was Weezy who married well, to a kind man and good father. Weezy

often wonders if she did this on purpose—thwarting expectations just to prove

her parents wrong.

But now that Weezy’s own children are adults, they haven’t exactly been

meeting her expectations either. Her oldest child, Martha, is thirty and

living in her childhood bedroom after a spectacular career flameout. Martha

now works at J.Crew, folding pants with whales embroidered on them and

complaining bitterly about it. Weezy’s middle child, Claire, has broken up

with her fiancé, canceled her wedding, and locked herself in her New York

apartment—leaving Weezy to deal with the caterer and florist. And her

youngest, Max, is dating a college classmate named Cleo, a girl so beautiful

and confident she wears her swimsuit to family dinner, leaving other members

of the Coffey household blushing and stammering into their plates.

As the Coffey children’s various missteps drive them back to their childhood

home, Weezy suddenly finds her empty nest crowded and her children in full-

scale regression. Martha is moping like a teenager, Claire is stumbling home

drunk in the wee hours, and Max and Cleo are skulking around the basement,

guarding a secret of their own. With radiant style and a generous spirit, _The

Smart One_ is a story about the ways in which we never really grow up, and the

place where we return when things go drastically awry: home.

This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.