| View Larger Image | The Quality of Life Report | Paperbackby meghan daum (Author)
| List Price: | $14.00 | |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) | | Page Count: | 336 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 25, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 471,604st |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Meghan Daum’s unforgettable debut novel brings her sharp wit and courageous social commentary to the story of Lucinda Trout, a New York television reporter in search of greener pastures. Moving to the slower- paced, friendly, and vastly more affordable Midwestern town of Prairie City, Lucinda zealously creates a series of televised reports for her New York audience about her newfound quality of life. But when Lucinda falls for eccentric local Mason Clay, her naïveté about the real world leads her down an unexpected path, where she encounters, among other things, a drafty old farmhouse filled with children, an ever-growing menagerie of farm animals, and the harshest winter the region has seen in twenty years. In other words, simplicity just isn’t as simple as it is cracked up to be, and "quality of life," Lucinda learns, is much more complicated than she ever imagined. |
Amazon.com Review
Meghan Daum's first book, the essay collection My Misspent Youth, was written with effortless humor and excoriating insight. This was a writer who made fun of everything, most especially herself. Humor and self-knowledge infuse her debut novel, The Quality of Life Report. Fans of Daum's essays probably know that her unworkable, expensive New York lifestyle led her to move to the Midwest. Same goes for the fictional Lucinda Trout, a New York TV producer who, while on assignment, falls in love with the town of Prairie City. Daum, with typical acuity, is wise to her character's real motivations for moving to the country: she wants to be a better person, and believes the Midwest will do the trick: "This was, after all, serious country. The real heartland, the plains. It was Willa Cather-novel serious. It was Sissy Spacek-movie serious and documentary-film-about-poor-conditions-in-meat-packing-plants-serious." Lucinda soon discovers that she's not immune to the less-than-perfect aspects of Prairie City living, and acquires a boyfriend of questionable hygiene and judgement; a rambling, isolated farmhouse that looks like the set to a Sam Shepard movie but is impossible to heat; and a tanning-bed tan and a set of false nails that are the region's signature style. The plot of the novel unwinds rather messily, and Daum doesn't always seem in control of her material. But she never lets Lucinda off the hook, and that's the key to the book's success. Daum has given her heroine a voice that is prickly, a little ruthless, and lovably vulnerable all at once. We don't always respect Lucinda, but we're pretty sure we'd be friends with her. --Claire Dederer |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 105 reviews)
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first impressions by mama miller (newark , CA)  4 Stars
September 17, 2009
Half way thru reading this book I wondered why I was reading such dribble but as I continued on I realized that these are the same things that I would be thinking and doing if I were in Lucinda's place if our lives had interchanged. Though I am not from New York but San Francisco I realized how amazing a writer that she is.
That this work should be classified as a memoir expect that it is not, it is fiction that this writer had made me care about the people these charterers Sue and Mason and Erin; that I almost knew what they would do when they weren't there with Lucinda.
A lack of depth that is often missing in works of fiction is not lost here. This book is so not about meth or fashion or writing or even about prairie life but about ourselves how we see ourselves how we discover who we are as women.
I loved the ending of this book and I never like it when a good book ends but this had the air of a finished story, that Lucinda not only grew up in a way but that she had become empowered, her mind more open that she sought to surround herself with had allowed her to find truly what quality of life really means.
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Wonderful Surprise by Dave 1965 (Knoxville, TN)  5 Stars
July 22, 2009
I picked this book up at one of the large sellers for maybe [...] I was really impressed by the writing and by how quickly you care about the characters. A lot has been said already that I won't repeat but this was simply a very impressive book and the author hopefully has many more in her!
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Tanning beds, fake nails, and lots and lots of cheap wine by M. Feldman (Bowdoin, Maine, USA)  2 Stars
March 27, 2009
I wanted to like Meghan Daum's "The Quality of Life Report," especially after the writer Curtis Sittenfeld, whose novel "Prep" I admire, touted the novel on NPR (September 2008) as high class "chick lit." Now, I'm not quite sure what constitutes "chick lit" (and neither is Sittenfeld), but in any case I took "The Quality of Life Report" along on a vacation---to the beach, actually. And I did like some of it, particularly Lucinda Trout's delicious sendups of politically correct book club gatherings, estrogen-deprived musical groups, bored public television station managers, and liberal ladies with gigantic dangly earrings. However, the demands of a plot, as opposed to the demands of a satirical sketch, begin to weigh the novel down after about 100 pages. The wacky barn dance with the priapic horse? Only someone who's never left Manhattan would find that believable. Then there's Lucinda's ability to find the cash to deal with every crazy, increasingly frantic and improbable emergency, despite failing to sell much of her work, and there's her unfathomable fidelity to her meth-addicted boyfriend Mason Clay. As the novel lurches toward its finish, the cover falls off, leaving the gears exposed. Enjoy this novel for its amusing takes on life as it (supposedly) is in the heartland, then leave it in your hotel room for the next guest to take to the beach.
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A Funny Account That Fails as a Strong Novel by A. St. James (Cambridge)  3 Stars
May 29, 2007
I enjoyed this book although, as others have pointed out, not half as much as her essay collection. And therein lies the problem: Daum is a gifted, at times brilliant writer with some beautiful insights and compelling, often heartbreaking, at times hilarious observations. I could read one essay from her after the other about virtually any topic and never get bored. However, is she a fiction writet? Not really.
This book is about 80% Telling and 20% Showing. Worse, the Telling sections, which dominate, are told pretty much the way Daum writes essays, making it almost impossible to get under the skin of Lucinda, her problems, NY, the Midwest, or any of the other characters. And the Showing parts, which are so few, since creating and sustaining a fiction scene is clearly not her forte, never delve as deep as they should. I always got the feeling that as soon as Daum--thankfully, I thought--opened up a scene and allowed us to "see" things, she abruptly stopped. Here, the intellect as opposed to the gut or the heart wins out and it's exhausting.
For example, why are we, as readers, supposed to believe Lucinda really falls in love with Mason? We first "spot" him enigmatically in the park, seen from Lucinda's very movie-biased eyes and the, wham, they're together! Not conneciton, no emotion, no magic--nothing to justify the relationship except rationalizations from, of course, Lucinda's own mouth. Therefore, when we find out he's turned to meth and their relationship sours, why should we care?
Basically, either Daum should stick to non fiction essays or she should hone her fiction skills. As it stands, this book would NEVER have been published had she not become well-known first. Just goes to show what cowards most people in the publishing world are!
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Felt like I was reading a draft by Anittah N. Patrick (Brooklyn, NY USA) 3 Stars
December 10, 2006
I wanted to, but I didn't love this book. Here's why:
1. Watery. I felt like I was reading a draft. The relationship between our protagonist Lucinda Trout (a 29 yo New Yorker who moves to the Midwest ostensibly to create slice-of-life reports for the a.m. TV show for which she works) and her boyfriend Mason seems ... translucent. Lucinda states things that come out of the left field to the reader. For example, when Lucinda claims to have fallen in love, it didn't make sense. As a reader, I hadn't yet met her boyfriend. I mean, I'd heard Lucinda talk about him. But I hadn't seen them interact. To make their relationship (and to an extent, her experience in the Midwest) real, Daum needed to
a. Condense, hone, refine. Enough with the repeat-y peat peat.
b. Show, not tell. More dialogue. More dramatic intrigue. More action, less narration.
2. NYCentric. Perhaps, as a woman who was born & raised in the Midwest, my radar was atwitter on this topic, but Daum assumed that her readers were all Manhattanites. Which, as a Midwesterner, I found condescending. Again, this problem could have been solved by a more elegant use of dialogue, e.g., phone calls to her girlfriends back home. As it is, it seems like Daum wants to tell her readers all the great things she now knows about the Midwest (people use tanning bed and get fake nails and drive trucks, etc.). Well good for you honey. Tell me something I don't know!
That said, I didn't hate this book, either. There were moments of funny, a realistic portrayal of the Midwest (meth addicts are people too, and yes, tanning beds can make you feel just as good as "personal coaches"), and Daum's Trout doesn't take her self to seriously.
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