Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan A Novel [Paperback]

From the bestselling author ofJane Austen in Boca, another witty tale that combines classic literature with contemporary social comedy. ---Hartford Courant

Carla Goodman's life in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is a little bit stressful these days. Her doctor husband is frazzled, her son's teachers say he needs Ritalin, and she's in the throes of planning her daughter's bat mitzvah. But it's her sweet widowed mother, Jessie Kaplan, who really has Carla worried, for Jessie has suddenly remembered that she was Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the Sonnets in a previous life. Can even the famed Dr. Leonard Samuels, psychiatrist and author of the self-help book,How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Mother-in-Law,help with a problem like this?
Witty, engaging, and wickedly observant,Much Ado About Jessie Kaplanis an unpredictable tale of love, loss, and family rites of passage.

Paula Marantz Cohenis a Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and the author ofJane Austen in Bocaas well as five scholarly nonfiction books.She lives in Moorestown, New Jersey.

1. How do you view Jessie Kaplan's ideas about her past life? In what ways are they creative and/or therapeutic for herself and for her family? Does it bother you that her ideas are never fully explained?
2. How is Carla's reaction to her mother's behavior at once logical, loving, and selfish? How do you view her handling of her daughter? Discuss the stresses of Carla's position as she struggles to do the best for her family.
3. How do Margot and her mother resemble and differ from each other? How does Margot reflect the gains that feminism has made possible for women as wellÔ