A Fortunate Age

I read "A Fortunate Age" by Joanna Smith Rakoff over the weekend. The story is about a group of friends who just graduated from Oberlin College and are now living in New York City. They graduated in the mid 1990's. Some go right to work and others go to graduate school. Some of them make mistakes that are recognized by their friends. Each of the friends get their own chapter. We hear about their jobs, their loves, and their family get-togethers. The story is told about what happened in between the times they see each other. So we don't get the story directly. It took me a while to catch on to this style of writing. I thought the beginning was a little slow but by the last third of the book, I was riveted to each character. One character was a rock musician, one a starving actress, one a semi-successful actor, one a college professor, one an eco-activist, and one a poetess working for a non-profit. The character who tied them all together is Sadie Peregrine. Don't you just love that name? Sadie Peregrine - I can just picture a feisty, little, bird-like woman with a raptor's instinct when it comes to protecting her family. I liked this story. I would not want to go back to those post-graduate years myself but I enjoyed reading about them.