Sister Reads | Review: The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Book: The Red Book

Author: Deborah Copaken Kogan

Pages: 368

Time it took me to read: 4 hours 

Plot Summary: 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, both among the East Coast elite and within the social milieu of her prep-schooled beau, Bucky. Addison yearned to shed the burden of her Mayflower heritage, finding escape in both art and in the arms of another woman. Mia mined the depths of her suburban ennui to enact brilliant performances on the Harvard stage, including a heartrending turn as Nora in A Doll’s House. Jane, an adopted Vietnamese war orphan, made sense of her fractured world through words, spending long hours as an editor at the Crimson.


Twenty years later, all 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, as troubled as her children’s psyches, and as mismanaged as her trust fund. 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, having lost her journalist husband—the father of her young child—to war, her adoptive mother to cancer, and quite possibly her current partner due to an errant email.


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.




Characters: The four main characters in the book are the four roommates turned best friends- Clover, Mia, Addison and Jane. Through them, we get to see the secondary set of characters in the book. These include Addison's struggling writer and major slacker of a husband- Gerry, who spends most of his time doing nothing but pretending to look for inspiration. Gerry also does nothing to help out with the three kids that they have, given he didn't want said kids and because Addison did, Gerry thinks it is her responsibility to raise them solo! Mia's husband, Jonathan, a successful "chick flick"/ "rom-com" director- on the other hand, is an all-round good guy who has helped with the kids and has provided well for his family. But nice as he is, Jonathan is hiding a terrible secret, one that will have some very serious repercussions for his family. Then there is Bucky, Clover's Freshman year boyfriend- rather unhappy in his marriage but someone who possesses more clarity than one would expect out of him. 

Addison's daughter- Trilby- and Mia's son- Max- also have some chapters from their perspective, which was cute. 

Apart from these four, we also get to see some of their classmates from Harvard, not just via their write-ups in the Red Book but also via their interactions with the four main characters over the Reunion Weekend. It is interesting to see the complexities of their lives as well. 

What I Liked: I liked reading about the way the lives of the four main characters work out- the dreams and aspirations they had and how life worked out for each of them. I also liked how each of them acknowledged that their lives were in a rut of sorts and that they needed to make changes that will help them find happiness. I also liked that the author explored some of the resentment that builds up in some of these long-term friendships. 

What I Didn't Like: There wasn't much to dislike in this book. I wish there was more of the four girls' lives in the past. Their present lives were well documented in the book but I'd have liked to see more of their in-between years- it would have put their present lives in better context. 

General Thoughts: I enjoy reading books about the every day lives of people. You know, with no major drama but just the very real drama that happens when one is living life. So, while there is no major high point in this book, but there are several dilemmas that each of the four protagonists face, which make it very interesting. 

Rating: 4/5