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The Red Book
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The Red Book
Unavailable
The Red Book
Audiobook12 hours

The Red Book

Written by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Narrated by Susan Bennet, Jennifer Cohn, Kate Udall and

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The Big Chill meets The Group in Deborah Copaken Kogan's wry, lively, and irresistible new novel about a once-close circle of friends at their twentieth college reunion.

Clover, Addison, Mia, and Jane were roommates at Harvard until their graduation in 1989. Clover, homeschooled on a commune by mixed-race parents, felt woefully out of place. Addison yearned to shed the burden of her Mayflower heritage. Mia mined the depths of her suburban ennui to enact brilliant performances on the Harvard stage. Jane, an adopted Vietnamese war orphan, made sense of her fractured world through words.

Twenty years later, their lives are in free fall. Clover, once a securities broker with Lehman, is out of a job and struggling to reproduce before her fertility window slams shut. Addison's marriage to a writer's-blocked novelist is as stale as her so-called career as a painter. Hollywood shut its gold-plated gates to Mia, who now stays home with her four children, renovating and acquiring faster than her director husband can pay the bills. Jane, the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper whose foreign bureaus are now shuttered, is caught in a vortex of loss.

Like all Harvard grads, they've kept abreast of one another via the red book, a class report published every five years, containing brief autobiographical essays by fellow alumni. But there's the story we tell the world, and then there's the real story, as these former classmates will learn during their twentieth reunion weekend, when they arrive with their families, their histories, their dashed dreams, and their secret yearnings to a relationship-changing, score-settling, unforgettable weekend.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 24, 2012
ISBN9781401326371
Unavailable
The Red Book
Author

Deborah Copaken Kogan

Deborah Copaken Kogan is the author of Shutter-babe, the bestselling memoir of her years as a war photographer. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Paris Match, Newsweek, Time, Elle, L'Express, and PHOTO, and on The Today Show, ABC News, Dateline NBC, and CNN. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

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Reviews for The Red Book

Rating: 3.4500032499999995 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

80 ratings19 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had attempted to read this before and put it down because it just didn't hold my interest, but I decided to give it another go since its been nominated for a literary prize. It was a struggle to get through and I'm not sure why its been deemed prize worthy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A group of friends attend their 20th Harvard reunion. There is hanky-panky, drama, reflection, conversation, and traumatic events (I won't spoil the plot). The titular red book is the alumni anniversary report bound in crimson, eagerly awaited by Harvard graduates every 5 years. I have no personal knowledge, since Radcliffe rejected me in 1969. The characters' red book pages dot the text and by the end of the book, you feel you know these people.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I requested this book from Early Readers and didn't get it, but it looked so good that I immediately purchased it as soon as it was released. I loved it. It has very snappy writing and some pretty intriguing moral questions. Lots of northeast liberal angst but the writing makes up for any predictable lesbian/crossdressing/gender reassignment plot lines and some snarky privileged whining. It has some good chuckles and some poignant "loss of a loved one" dialog. The literary device of introducing the characters with their entries in the Harvard Red Book was great idea. It was a great read. Highly recommend!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received The Red Book as a Library Thing Early Reviewer, and noted that the Harvard alumnus magazine recently reviewed it. (My wife is a grad school alum, so she doesn't get "The Red Book". She does connect over a long weekend every summer with two of her Harvard classmates, so they are still quite connected personally- is this unique to Harvard?- I don't think so. I take some issue with those reviewers who didn't enjoy this novel. Some of the characterizations are a bit stereotypical, but they are generally realistic. As I look back at the lives of my classmates from college and graduate school, I see many familiar themes and personalities. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. It's difficult maintaining common interests and values with old friends one sees infrequently. People frequently exceed or fail to live up to their "potential". I think this novel captures mid life crises well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this novel as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program and approached it rather cautiously. Any contemporary novel about alums from an elite university reuniting is immediately compared to The Group and most fall way short. But I have to admit that this one deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as McCarthy's classic.This could have been just another novel about priveleged, college kids with an outsized sense of entitlement who grew up to be priviliged adults with an outsized sense of entitlement, but Kogan added enough dysfunction, regret, struggle and tragedy to temper the characters and make them relatable and likeable. The structure of the book -- opening each section with the bio that each character "wrote" to be included in the class's alumni directory -- was a clever way to introduce characters throughout the novel. (It was also convenient for flipping back to review when I forgot some details about the minor characters.)Overall, I felt this novel was a bit of a guilty like -- like enjoying a candy bar while flipping through an issue of Cosmo -- but there times when it transcended that and offered some moving truths about the choices we make early and how they affect our lives for the long haul. Dealing with parenting and infidelity issues, as well as the death of a parent were also deftly -- and, where appropriate, amusingly -- handled.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Though I did not know about "The Red Book" (Harvard alumni publication) before picking up this book at the library, I was immediately drawn to it because (1) I graduated from college in 1989, the same year as the alums in this book (at their 20th reunion) and (2) I worked at private schools and wrote and edited class notes for alumnae/alumni publications. I found this to be a fun and enjoyable read, and eventually bought it for my e-reader. (Yes, library books do create book/e-sales.) I think it was Adam Gopnik who said on the jacket copy It's "The Big Chill" for the Facebook generation. I pretty much agree. It had a definite soap-opera feel - A LOT happens to this relatively small cast of characters in very short order. I laughed out loud at the $100,000 fine from parking tickets ignored for 20 years. I was struck by the concept of going to a college reunion - I went to a giant state university and have never considered going to a college reunion, nor would I (though I keep in touch with a few college friends), but I can compare it to my small-town high school in which a large percentage of our 109-member class, not to mention some of our former teachers, are Facebook friends and cheer each other on through the ups and downs of life. There were a couple of instances where modern terms crept in - a "flash mob"? I would never think of friends of that era as a flash mob, even if it were today. Minor quibble though. I appreciated that the author filled in so many of the details of what happened to the characters later in life. Loved the ending paragraph.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    For the sake of the review, I tried my best to get through this book, but I only got as far as chapter 3. I found the characters to be boring and their personalities felt forced. I think I had requested this book based on the description and ignored the author. When the book came in the mail, I realized I had read her other book, Between Here and April. I really did not like that book. Maybe that soured my mood for this one. The premise is very chick-lit (a girl's weekend reunion at college turns into life-altering revelations), and also seemed unrealistic. People don't change overnight and they don't change over 2 nights.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The description for this book made it sound like it would be interesting, but in fact I could hardly finish it. The story never really went anywhere. The characters were annoying and I didn't like any of them. Am I really supposed to believe that each of them could resolve their big "problem" or come to their big "life realization" or experience a big "life moment" over the course of a single weekend? Maybe because I didn't go to an Ivy League college, I just didn't get the whole "reunion weekend" concept. In any event, I didn't enjoy this book and wouldn't recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was apprehensive about reading yet another reunion book, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I received this book from the Early Reviewers program, and I found it a fast and compelling read. Although there were many characters, it was easy to keep track of them. I thought the author did a great job bringing these characters to life. "Gincam" did a great job summarizing the book, so I won't be repetitive. I would recommend this book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I just simply didn't like The Red Book. I did not find the characters or the story very interesting. I received the book for review so I felt I had an obligation to finish reading it, but I never got into the story. It sounded promising when I read the teaser where the book promises an "unforgettable reunion weekend". It didn't deliver. People who love their class reunions may enjoy this book, but I found it quite lacking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are three inescapable truths about human beings: the way we see ourselves, the way we are perceived by others, and the way we actually exist. A twenty-year class reunion is the perfect venue to display all three views, as the attendees meet, mix, mingle and migrate through survival of the event. In "The Red Book", Deborah Copaken Kogan serves us a slice of Harvard Pie, as the lives of four roommates from the class of '89 are detailed and given a fortyish mid-life checkup as they reunite after two decades. Harvard, venerable institution that it remains, requests its alumni to update their lives on file every five years, and the results are compiled into a red-covered anniversary report which is sent to every graduate. Kogan's story line begins with the Twentieth Anniversary Report for the class of '89, and its final chapter is the report for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary. In between these reports, the lives of the four roomies, Addison, Clover, Mia, and Jane, and those around them, are sketched out in sharp lines, vivid hues, and subtle shadings. Since this is a Harvard Pie, the slices are served in grand style, but the ingredients for the recipe are basic. All human beings, regardless of social status and financial state, are made of common elements, just varying in levels of intensity. You may see something of yourself in Kogan's characters, or you may see yourself as an outside observer, but the fascination remains the same. Greener grass still needs to be weeded. Not all of the characters are likeable, but they are quite readable, and that makes "The Red Book" a delicious dish indeed. Review Copy Gratis Library Thing
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book could have been really great, I think. There are some very funny moments that, left to their own devices, and joined with more of the same, would have made this into a hilarious but not mean-spirited send-up of middle-aged ennui, college reunions, and the sort of institutional hubris that leads to the creation of The Red Book, a bound, book-length collection of page-long updates about the lives of an entire class of Harvardians every five years in preparation for their reunion.Instead, the book is often self-serious and overwritten, reliant on stereotypes instead of character building, and the early introductions of the four main characters are status-oriented and off-putting. Copaken jumps from head to head to head with dizzying speed, giving us the thoughts of the four main characters, their partners, their kids, and random individuals with whom they interact throughout the weekend of their twentieth reunion. Five pages in I was sure I was going to hate the whole thing, and though there are redeeming moments towards the end that come across as genuine, they're not enough to rescue the book from its flaws (and they're let to go on too long, falling victim to Copaken's inability to extricate herself from a scene and her tendency to give too much of the wrong information). The main characters do turn out to be more complex, and more interesting, than the initial descriptions invite you to believe, and I think it's because of that that the book manages to succeed at all in spite of its weaknesses. The epiphanies, though they require some suspension of disbelief (and a little bit of a buy-in that everybody cheats in marriage and that's okay) don't feel forced, even if the scope of the novel results in them being a bit rushed. This could easily have been four novellas, I think; maybe even four novels.This isn't a terrible book; the plot is complex and engaging, and Copaken is very good at managing the many, many threads she's carrying throughout the book without drawing attention to how she's doing it - not an easy task. But the writing, can't get out of its own way much of the time, and although it's always clear whose head we're in, the constantly shifting point of view - and the multiplicity of points of view - can be a little distracting. Of interest, though, if you've lived through the experience of banging out an entry for a Class Report or awkwarded your way through the four-day festival of recrimination, regret, and free drinks that is a Harvard Reunion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although I do not attend my own class reunions I seem to have read many a novel dealing with the topic. So although I was delighted to receive this book as an Early Reviewer copy I was a little apprehensive: would it measure up to the best, or be a well-meaning dud or land somewhere in the middle? To my mind it was right up there with some of the best. As another reviewer said, Gincam did an excellent review summarizing the book and it's strengths so I won't attempt to add to that. I will just say that despite the fact that few reunions (I imagine) encompass all the life changes this particular one did, Deborah Copaken Kogan has written a sympathetic, humorous book that was also thought provoking.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I thought about putting this down several times because it didn't really hold my interest. Also, the author goes out of her way to drive home her idea that ALL relationships will inevitably involve an infidelity. No matter how safe you think you are, or how well you know your partner, give it up, she seems to imply, human beings are going to cheat on each other.
    I found that frustrating.

    Overall a mildly entertaining read but on the vapid, gossipy side.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I started off liking this book but got increasingly annoyed with it by the end. It follows the story of four Harvard friends and their various spouses and children through the weekend of their 20th reunion. The Red Book is a Harvard publication where the alumni send in updates on their lives every five years for the book which is published before that class's reunion (every five years) This book starts with the alumni entries of four women, Clover, Addison, Jane and Mia and gives us a bit of an overview of not just their most recent five years but their lives since university. The four women are all leading lives of varying success, enduring job and family loss and marital problems as the story opens. Each section of the book starts with more alumni updates for characters that we may or may not meet in that section but may be referred to. I found that a bit annoying, especially reading through a fairly detailed alumni five year bio when that character is barely mentioned or grouped in with a few that are mentioned not even by name. You only recognize them by their deeds. i.e. one being a blind doctor. I also found that the characters would go off on a tedious philosophical tangent for no apparent reason, ruminating about what they were thinking at the time, what was going on in their head, or there might be a somewhat preachy passage about some political issue. It would go on for pages and not really contribute anything to the story at all. One character eulogized a late friend for pages, detailing the deceased's life and she was not a character that was mentioned prior to that section and had no apparent impact on the storyline at all aside from one small thing. The eulogy section could have been cut to a quarter and still have the same storyline result. I skipped most of it. I found myself doing that increaslingly more nearer the end of the book. That's too bad because aside from all of these asides, the storyline and the main characters and their problems were interesting so it gets three stars for that but lost stars because of the other stuff.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am still attempting to decide if the author was telling a story/stories or doing character studies. To me it felt & worked more like a character study of these four women who graduated Harvard in 1989 & their spouses, partners, friends, children, co-grads. They have returned for a reunion and as they meet up with each other the reader learns their thoughts and expectations for each one as we also learn the accomplishments of each one. 'The Red Book' signifies the book that comes out to the alumni every five years and each alumni is encouraged to write their personal contact information, what they are now doing with their lives, what their spouses are doing with theirs, their children by name and year of birth, etc. Some complete these questionnaires, some do not, but most of 'ours' do. They are compiled into 'The Red Book' and then sent out. Then when at their 20 year reunion each alumni will have an idea of what their previous classmate's lives have turned out to be.Of our ladies: Mia is married to film director Jonathan, is a stay at home mom of 4; Max-17, Eli-14, Joshua-10, and infant Zoe-7 months. Mia wanted to be an actress but it just never worked out for her. However she has taken to wedded life and motherhood quite naturally and is content and happy in this role.Clover is the managing director & leader of a team focused on mortgage-backed securities. Her partner in life, Danny is a Legal Aid Attorney, doing a lot of pro-bono work. They have no children.Jane is a reporter for the Boston Globe and was married to a journalist Herve, who was murdered while on a story. Her current partner Bruno, knew them when they were a them. He is an editor and Jane has a daughter, Sophie-6, by her first husband. They have no other children.Addison is an artist married to a writer, Gunner. Both seem to be rather non-productive and live off a family inheritance which seems to support most of the family. They have three children; daughter Trilby-13, Houghton-11 and Thatcher-10. All three of them go by their middle names.The girls all get together annually at Mia & John's vacation home in Antibes and a couple of them get together more frequently as they are able.At this twenty year reunion they come back to Harvard bringing with them their children and significant others. We get to know them all and Kogan has compiled some well rounded characters. There is growth and/or regression within all of their lives. I enjoyed the characters, their thoughts, lives and I thought that the book worked very well on that level. However as a novel, I was left feeling that something was lacking. I liked it well enough to give it 2 1/2 stars and I guess would have to say that I guardedly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had never heard of Harvard's Red Book before I recently read Deborah Copaken Kogan's novel, The Red Book. Every five years, Harvard compiles a book filled with short essays written by each graduate, sharing what they have been up to in the past five years.The actual Red Book made headlines recently when infamous graduate Ted Kazcynski, the man known to the world as the Unabomber, returned his questionnaire listing his occupation as 'prisoner' and under the awards section, wrote 'eight life sentences', and his entry was included in the book, angering many people including his victims' families.None of this has anything to do with Kogan's book, but perhaps the timely story will bring some publicity to this wonderful novel. Kogan takes the popular concept of four female protagonists (Little Women, Sex & the City, J. Courtney Sullivan's 2011 novel Maine), and adds a dash of The Big Chill (one of my favorite movies) that brought me to tears by the end of this emotional story.Cleverly using the conceit of the Red Book, she introduces her four main characters with their 20 year entries. Sometimes books with multiple protagonists can lead to confusion keeping everyone straight, and by introducing in this manner, that problem is solved.We are thrust into the lives, their marriages, their children, their careers, what they have been doing since college. Addison has put her career as an artist on hold to raise her three children and support her husband, a writer who doesn't seem to do much writing (or any parenting).Clover was a huge success at Lehman Brothers, until they went under. Now she is unemployed and trying unsuccessfully to have a child with her husband, a Legal Aid attorney.Mia went to LA after college to try and make it as an actress. She met an older man, Jonathan, a successful director and they have four children and a good life, with homes in LA and the Antibes. She and Jonathan are deeply in love, but what she doesn't know is that they took a big financial hit during the recession.Jane is a reporter for the Boston Globe, based in France. Her first husband was killed while reporting in Afghanistan. She has a daughter with him and is now living with her husband's best friend. Her adopted mother recently passed away after a long illness, and Jane is bereft.The four women all meet up again at the 20th reunion, bringing their families with them, except for Clover. Clover runs into an old flame and has a plan that unwittingly involves him . Addison ends up in serious trouble for unpaid parking tickets and her old lover, a wealthy woman, comes to rescue.Jane is trying to decide whether to move back to the United States to write a novel, and has to face infidelities from her partner. Mia wants to return to acting.Being back in Cambridge brings back memories for all of them, and causes some of them to reflect on their regrets, the things they should have done. The story culminates at a memorial service for a classmate, and all of the emotions of the weekend coming crashing down around them.I really liked the relationship between Mia and Jonathan. Their marriage is solid and loving, and the scene where Jonathan comforts an upset Jane is so tender and moving.Two of the families have teenage children, and a romance between them ensues. Kogan writes the scenes with the teens with empathy and insight, and I liked that the kids weren't one-dimensional. Their story was important as well.Some books you love right away, this was one that took me awhile to get into, but by the end, when Kogan takes a character down a road that I was not happy about, I actually said "NO!" when I saw it coming, and almost cursed her. That is how much I was invested in this story, in this particular character. I love getting lost in a good story, and I was enveloped in this engrossing book.My husband loves movies where at the end they tell you what happens to the characters, and this novel ends like it begins: we read the 25th anniversary report and find out how things have turned out.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Lately my reading inclinations have shifted a bit from action or plot-driven books to ones that are driven by characters and their interactions. So when Ann from Books on the Nightstand recommended this audio, I checked it out. I thought it would be entirely epistolary in form, but it isn’t. There are some Red Book entries scattered throughout and those form the introductions to the people we meet, but then it turns to a traditional 3rd person perspective. Sometimes those introductions aren’t important and that got annoying. Certain characters with Red Book entries aren’t pivotal to the plot and are only mentioned in passing and it was irritating to hear all about them, waiting for them to figure in the story and never hearing about them again. Overall the narration by a large cast was pretty good, however some of the women’s voices are too similar to immediately distinguish them. Because the rarified world of Harvard, Radcliffe etc., is so unattainable to me and to many others, the book has more than a dash of voyeuristic appeal. Not all of the characters are insufferable jerks, but a few are as would be with any group. The relationships between are interesting and sometimes unexpected. Mostly the author paints them starkly, warts and all, but there is a soft-focus about some of the more negative aspects that renders the story nostalgic more than journalistic. Another reviewer noted that everyone’s marriage or whatever was plagued by infidelity and it’s true. Strange though. Everyone? Even the seemingly best and most honest of the pairings was marred by this. Other fates weren’t handed out so even-handedly so some get rich while others go broke, some have steady careers while some do not, some have responsible kids, some do not. Everything turns out alright in the end though, for pretty much everyone and it’s the friendships that do the saving. In a way I was a little jealous of the safety network that surrounds these people. It stems from their being together at Harvard, but their initial meeting was just random. They play it up though and for the most part are good at letting bygones be bygones. Take Addison and her college sweetheart; now that was over and above the call of duty in terms of letting the past go. There may be baggage and questionable motives, but overall the friendships are mostly believable. It is fiction, but the lack of any enemies other than the twist of fate was a bit off-putting. Again with the soft-focus technique. But sometimes I need that in fiction and this delivered well enough.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, I finally finished "The Red Book" by Deborah Copaken Kogen. I say finally because I had to stop every now and then to put it down and catch my breath. I felt worded out and at times exhausted. There is a lot of "wordage" and not much dialog and many people to keep up with! It has funny, sad moments and at times I even cried…but for me it was a somewhat difficult read.This is a book about what happens to a group of wide eyed & hopeful classmates through the years as they all go about the lives they thought a Harvard education wouldafford them. Every 5 years each graduate is asked to submit a page of "where they are now" and then all are bound together into a red book and sent out to allthe graduates. This is the story of the class of 1989, specifically four women and their 20 year class reunion and how their dreams came true or mostly just changed shape. My favorite parts of the book were the pages the graduates sent in...a book of just those wonderful made up lives would, to me have been much better than thefew people the book actually focused on