The Red Book - Hardcover

Deborah Copaken Kogan worked as a photojournalist from 1988 to 1992, and her photographs appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, L'Express, Liberation, and Geo, among many other international newspapers and magazines. She spent the next six years in TV journalism, including a time as a producer for Dateline NBC. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times and elsewhere. She is a Harvard alumna. She lives in New York City with her husband, Paul Kogan, and their three children.

Four college roommates from Harvard’s class of 1989 head to their 20-year reunion with partners, spouses, children, and plenty of emotional baggage in tow. Coming from wildly diverse backgrounds, Clover, Addison, Jane, and Mia have continued on divergent postgraduate tracks. From one woman’s dreams of an independent art career stifled by her husband’s writing job to another’s acting ambitions overshadowed by the demands of motherhood, the women take this opportunity to realize how their college dreams have slowed, shifted, or disappeared entirely while new opportunities have opened up. Author Kogan does an admirable job of giving her diverse group uniquely personal narration styles, and some refreshingly comic scenes break up expected swaths of reflective nostalgia. Kogan’s commitment to her characters is evident in this sweeping novel, where remembrances of things past mingle with the characters’ excitement and unease at what their futures hold. For readers who enjoyed Jennifer Close’s Girls in White Dresses (2011) or Meg Waite Clayton’s The Four Ms. Bradwells (2011), this snappy, empathetic portrait of past regrets, settled scores, and shared history is an engaging read. --Stephanie Turza