A Tale of Two Eileens: The Switch by Beth O'Leary

Such an easy to enjoy novel, set in London and a small village in the Yorkshire Dales, about two women, twenty-nine-ish Leena and her seventy-nine year old grandmother Eileen.

Leena is a high-octane rising-star executive at a consulting company in London, known for her outstanding presentations. She's in a relationship with Ethan, something of a male counterpart. Eileen is supercharged too, but as the get-it-done, list-making center of village activities, serving on every committee and a friend to all. Her former husband, Wade, left her for a dance instructor, but she's doing just fine without him.

The two form a sandwich of a relationship with Marian, Leena's mother/Eileen's daughter. What they all share is their deep grief over the recent loss of Carla, Marian's younger daughter, to an agonizing death from cancer. Leena and Marian are currently estranged.

Leena has a panic attack and meltdown at a presentation, and her kind (fortunately) boss, Rebecca, forces her to take a two-month leave of absence so she can heal and regroup. Leena confides in Eileen, who urges her to visit in the village. They decide, on a whim, to switch places for the two months: Leena will stay in Eileen's village cottage and Eileen will go to London to Leena's apartment, which will be a chance for her to grab a taste of her youthful dream to be an independent woman in the city.

While the overall plot is somewhat predictable, many unlikely and surprising events ensue, and the result is a contemporary, colorful, entertaining, and heartfelt story that most readers are likely to enjoy (and maybe envy a bit). I definitely recommend Beth O'Leary's The Switch.

New York, I Love You – Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

This absolutely wonderful novel chronicles the lifetime of Lillian Boxfish, a woman in her 80s, as she looks back over her life and career as a pioneering woman in advertising...long before Mad Men came along.

Lillian, talking with her overbearing son by phone from her Manhattan apartment, proceeds from her dinner plans to a walk that will take her past haunts old and new. The time is December 31, 1984 – and New York has not yet entered the glossy, cleaned-up state it is in now. There is still a great deal of street crime, AIDS is rampant, and less than two weeks before, Bernhard Goetz had shot four Black teenagers in the subway, provoking outrage, fear, and anger, along with a city-wide debate on his actions, gun ownership (legal and otherwise) and causing great turmoil in general.

Through the night, Lillian traverses the city, interacts with the people she meets, and observes the sights and sounds around her. In between the chapters that describe her walk, she reminisces about her experiences as a young woman, who first came to New York in 1926, and never left.

I knew and well remember the New York of the 80s, having arrived in 1979. It was a little dangerous, you had to watch your back (literally) as you traversed the streets, but it was vibrant, alive, and quirky. This book brings that all back to me in the best of ways.

Lillian Boxfish recalls the life of Margaret Fishback, who began her career in advertising at Macy's, and ultimately went on to become the highest-paid woman in her field. She later became a published poet whose poetry appeared in the most prestigious magazines of the mid twentieth century, and later in anthologized volumes of her work.