This book, The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker, has a lot of really interesting elements: a deep discussion of medical ethics and the role of big  pharmaceutical companies; a love triangle, some compelling children.  Here’s a nutshell of what goes on:

Matthew and Amelia were once in love and planning to raise a family together, but a decade later, they have become professional enemies. To Amelia, who has dedicated her life to medical ethics, Matthew’s job as a high-powered pharmaceutical executive has turned him into a heartless person who doesn’t care about anything but money.  Now they’re kept in balance only by Matthew’s best and oldest friend, Ben, a rising science superstar — and Amelia’s new boyfriend.

That balance begins to crumble one night when, coming home to his upscale Philadelphia loft, Matthew finds himself on a desolate bridge face-to-face with a boy screaming for help. Homeless for most of his life, ten-year-old Danny is as streetwise as he is world-weary, and his desperation to save his three-year-old sister means he will do whatever it takes to get Matthew’s help. What follows is an escalating game of one-upmanship between Matthew, Amelia, and Danny, as all three players struggle to defend what is most important to them — and are ultimately forced to reconsider what they truly want.

The book is told from shifting narrative voices over shifting periods of time: the backstory, which involves the threesome’s early relationships with each other, and then the current story, which moves back and forth between the adults and Danny, the ten year old homeless boy who with his sister finds his way into Matthew’s  home. I found, like The Hidden Side of A Leaf, that the child was really the most (and some might feel only) compelling character in the book. I felt myself anxious to return to the chapters with the youngest narrator because in the end, this was the character I truly cared about.

If you’re intrigued, you can read the first chapter here. It begins with the sentence, “Was Matthew Connelly a bad man?” This question is at the core of the book, but for me, it wasn’t the main issue. He wasn’t a man I really cared about. He was a rich, scheming corporate guy. The book’s journey is all about him finding his soul, but that journey just didn’t ring true to me. It all had the element of fantasy, and I didn’t know if this was deliberate or not. It wasn’t fantastical enough to qualify as magical realism, and it wasn’t realistic enough to qualify as feasable.

When the homeless children find their way into the rich guy’s apartment, they rummage through his cupboards and eat all the crackers and bread in sight; then it seems they might be in big trouble because they have to keep hiding out and they can’t find any more food.  Then they spy a “big silver box” which is miraculously filled with food! It’s… a refrigerator!!!  This was just one of my many “Oh COME ON NOW” moments. Even a ten year old homeless boy knows what a refrigerator is (he did, at one point in his life, live in an apartment which presumably had normal kitchen appliances).

This wasn’t my favorite novel. But I know that many readers out there will love it. It’s a quick and accessible read. In many ways it’s a page turner, and the tension between the major players is palpable and effective. It is not literary fiction by any stretch. I wish I hadn’t had to finish it in a hurry the day before I go to Hawaii,  because it could prove to be one of those perfect beach reads.