the heights - peter hedges

have recently become a fan of the work of writer peter hedges - who directed "what's eating gilbert grape", "about a boy" and the brilliant, hilarious "dan in real life".
he is an outstanding scriptwriter and seems to have a talent for unique characters.

his next project will be adapting for the big screen his latest book, "the heights" - a fantastic novel about a young middle-class american couple that provides a very amusing, witty portrayt of modern (married) life without being too predictable or idly harsh.

peter hedges' website is: http://peterhedgeswriter.com/ph/

and the following article comes from the WASHINGTON POST >>

Book review: Susan Coll reviews 'The Heights' by Peter Hedges
By Susan Coll
Wednesday, March 10, 2010; C04


THE HEIGHTS
By Peter Hedges
Dutton. 295 pp. $25.95

What's best about Brooklyn Heights is the view, says Kate, the young wife in Peter Hedges's third novel, which is as much an ode to a beloved neighborhood as a tale of contemporary marriage. "Standing on the Promenade, a slight breeze blowing, the whoosh of traffic racing below on the BQE, looking across New York Harbor at majestic Manhattan and where the Twin Towers had once been, I had the distinct feeling this place could be home." This tony cluster of historic brownstones, cobblestone streets and quaint eateries is just as important a protagonist as the hedge-fund-manager dads and stroller-pushing moms depicted in this quirky, amusing book.

Kate's husband, Tim, is a history teacher at an elite private school. He's a modern, sensitive man who practices yoga and shops for his wife's favorite organic milk. He's also prone to tears: He cries the first time he and Kate have sex; he cries at their wedding; he cries when he hears of a successful incidence of potty-training at home. Despite such excessive devotion, he is not immune to the charms of an enigmatic new neighbor, Anna, and what develops between them provides the tension in this chronicle of "a great, ordinary love," set in the "bumpy, broken early years of the twenty-first century."

As Wall Street types snap up neighborhood real estate, Tim and Kate struggle to pay their phone bill and coexist with two small boys in a cramped apartment. When Kate gets a lucrative position at a nonprofit, Tim takes a leave of absence to work on his dissertation. He also replaces his wife in the coffee klatches and playgroups, enabling Hedges to observe the eccentricities and excesses of modern parenting through Tim's wide-eyed lens. Around the table at the preferred gathering spot, Muffins and More (the local moms avoid Starbucks across the street), Tim mingles with the likes of "Grateful Dead Mom," "Cindy McCain Mom" and "Milk Mom, who, rumor had it, still breast-fed her five-year-old boy." At a birthday party for a 4-year-old, an alienated Tim sees "too many guests, too many presents, too much candy and cake for any one kid."

Culturally and geographically, Hedges is a long way from the small Iowa town of his breakthrough 1991 debut, "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." Yet the author brings with him a similarly earnest Midwestern sensibility, which is what's most notable about this book. There's a surprising and possibly refreshing lack of cynicism here. If you like your male-driven domestic novels dark (think Tom Perrotta's "Little Children," or more recently Jess Walter's "The Financial Lives of the Poets"), "The Heights" may lack bite. But if you've had enough suburban nihilism, Hedges brightens things up, even if his conclusions are not all sweetness and light.