Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

Book Overview

Eden Rock Country Club is a grand New England institution, a lush haven of leisure and cocktails, where gossip and intrigue lurk discreetly behind a veil of old-world propriety. But one Fourth of July, a flock of geese descends on the club's manicured lawns; never fond of outsiders, the Eden Rock denizens find these new guests distinctly unwelcome.

When Charles Lambert, a bond trader with a strong portfolio but a weak golf game, accidentally...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316015008
• ISBN13: 9780316015004
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Fun and Cross Purposes

This is a fun satiric account of a season at a posh Boston country club. Seemingly, everyone is at cross-purposes and it all begins with a iron shot that kills a goose. Then the fun starts. A few of the cross-purposes: the goose killer's daughter is an animal rights activist who loves to demonstrate and takes to her task warmly. On the other side is the up-tight, young, super-trained Cornell graduate manager who takes on the demonstrators and the geese. At the same time he is trying to eliminate the geese his groundskeeper is raising a gosling and the chef is fattening them to get them ready for the season-ending banquet. There is plenty of humorous conflict and even more barbs at the rich and leisurely. An old member and her protege even keep "the book" where pregnant members reveal the real fathers of their babies so inappropriate marriages can be prevented in the future. The characters in this book are terrific. Almost all start out as stereotypes, but through Ms Hart's deft handling, they soon assume depth and surprising attributes, both good and bad. Several of them are very memorable. This is a fun read that will keep you giggling with an occasional guffaw thrown in. Ms Hart takes particular relish in taking the characters with the most extreme positions in life and showing how they will compromise when their personal needs require it. This book is very amusing and. at times thought-provoking, which is a very good combination. Highly recommended.

Hilarious, clever, and just fun!

I enjoyed this wicked satire about the cast of characters that inhabit a refined, old country club somewhere in the suburbs of Boston. The delicate balance of symbiosis among members, board, and staff goes haywire when the Canada geese that plague the grounds get into the mix. The killing of one goose by an errant golf ball sets into motion a believable but hilarious chain of events, including (but not limited to): the owner of the golf ball having an existential crisis; his daughter (a wannabe animal-rights activist) organizing a protest and trying to get the clubhouse to go vegan; the chef getting ideas about all those geese; a long-time member reminiscing about hunting parties; a mishap involving big goose-scaring beachballs; broken hearts engineered by keepers of a secret book in the members' library; and the poor manager just trying to hold it all together and keep his job. The story is seen through the eyes of many characters, and the voicing of each is just right. The writing is wry, funny, and snappy. The story just skims along, and no one is safe from having his or her deeply held convictions lampooned. There were a few inaccuracies in the thoughts of the vegan activist, but maybe they were on purpose, seeing as to how she was kind of a reluctant vegan. For example, she was thinking to herself how uncomfortable her rubber clogs were, but that leather was bad, but hm, maybe rubber is too, because it's a petroleum product. Um, no. Rubber is made, as the song says, from the rubber tree plant. But that's just me being picky. The book is a hoot! It does wrap up maybe a little too tidily at the end, but gosh, that's part of the fun, too! Read it if you're looking for some light enjoyable reading with snappy writing.

Very clever and a good read

Hooray for JoeAnn Hart and her debut novel "Addled," a fine satire about old money pretensions, new age politics, food and surprising couplings at a New England country club. Its cleverness is only exceeded by its true heart. Perfect gift for a golfer with a sense of humor.

The Country Club vs the geese

Reviewed by Joe Graham for Reader Views (5/07) Canadian geese have made a home on the lush green grounds of the Eden Rock Country Club of the Boston area and they are creating problems for Gerard Wilton, the manager of the club and the members of the exclusive club. That is the basic problem that Hart sets up in the book, but from that start she takes the reader on a fun, page-turning journey of the members' lives as they deal with the geese and a myriad of other problems in their lives. Charles Lambert is the first one to develop serious problems with the geese. While golfing with his buddies, he accidentally hits and kills a goose with his 3 iron shot. This turns out to be a life-changing event for Charles and as he tries to deal with his distress over the dead goose, he becomes estranged from his wife and friends. His wife is dealing with her own traumas when she is neglected by Charles. She is also one of the keepers of the club's secrets and she begins to question the rightness of that task. And to add further to the mix, their daughter Phoebe returns home to try to convert the club and its restaurant to a vegan menu and to save the geese. The manager Gerard has his own set of problems as he tries to deal with the demands of managing a very upscale country club with a very demanding set of members. His chef Vita is also awash in problems as she tries to create culinary masterpieces while her love life keeps falling apart. The reader will probably be drooling over some of her creations and wondering where to get the recipes. The head groundskeeper Barry adopts one of the offending geese as a pet which puts him at odds with Gerard. All in all, the book is a fun read as Hart pokes fun at the club and its membership. I would recommend the book to anyone who is looking for a fun read that pokes gentle fun at the rich as they pursue their life and loves at the country club. I thoroughly enjoyed "Addled" and I was interested to see how the author resolved the character's problems. And at the end of the book, Hart resolves all the problems in a very pleasing way for everyone concerned - well, almost everyone!