Reviews of Love And Houses

''...a voice which is unmistakably Leimbach's own.  Imagine an older, more worldly Bridget Jones with an American accent but the same self-deprecating, confessional humour, and you're almost there. Now speed it up, slowing only to emphasise certain words (when Leimbach uses italics it's like she's come home)...There's relentless humour and truth in the dialogue between friends and couples as well as in Leimbach's descriptions of everything...''
Xanthe Sylvester, Time Out, September 3-10, 1997

Leimbach (Sun Dial Street, LJ 2/15/92) has written an entertaining diversion in the style of Laurie Colwin and Stephen McCauley that is like gossiping with an uncommonly witty friend. Meg, seven months pregnant, writes fiction; her husband, Andy, owns a bookstore and restores rare books as a hobby. With their apartment on the market and plans to restore an old schoolhouse in the works, Andy leaves. Meg is not really surprised, since Andy stood her up twice at the altar before they finally married. Miserable, she turns to her friends for company. She compares their marriages and love affairs to house hunting: when couples are in the early stages of love, they don't care where they live, but once they start fantasizing about the perfect dwelling, they're in a more settled and dull relationship. Meg is a wonderfully likeable character, tossing off one-liners with aplomb, gleefully insulting annoying people, and somehow understanding her hapless husband's fear of commitment. Highly recommended.
From Library Journal, Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

''The structure of Love and Houses owes more to stand-up comedy than the novelist's tradition: it's a breathless riff filled with irreverent dialogue and painful anecdotes that make you laugh out loud.''
The New York Times Book Review, Barbara Quick

''In their late thirties, fiction writer Meg Mackenzie and her bookshop-owning husband Andy Howe decide to have a baby. At least that's what Meg thought. But when Andy moves out of their Boston apartment while she's "heavily pregnant," she's not sure whether it was really a joint decision. Andy never took any interest in the new life they had created. Once when they ran into each other at the market and he praised the regularly misted produce, Meg believed that he was more concerned about "vegetable presentation" than their baby. A few weeks before giving birth to Frances, Meg must contend not only with her absent husband but also with the sale of their apartment to writer Theo Clarkson, Meg's ex-lover, and with the installation of central heating in their recently purchased dream home, an 18th-century schoolhouse. Leimbach's often amusing look at how romance and real estate are intertwined offers a fresh take on married love.''
Jennifer Henderson, Booklist

''...this tart, witty tale of a very pregnant Boston novelist whose handsome, hopelessly neurotic husband abandons her in her seventh month. ''I always compare love and houses--there's something essentially the same about them,'' explains Meg Howe, our frazzled, 37-year-old narrator. ''A new marriage is almost always followed by a new house and that same house is sold like old junk when the marriage collapses... Want to know what walls would say if they could talk? Well, they'd say don't paper me in brocade, but they'd also say, Marry in a bad market, divorce in a good one.'' Meg, who has been left not only pregnant but holding a very large loan and living in an apartment she's unable to sell, knows what she's talking about. Though she realizes she should have anticipated husband Andy's dark-of-night disappearance (it took him five years of false starts finally to marry her), she can't quite accept the fact that he's really left. Humiliated, fat, unable to concentrate on the novel she's writing, Meg struggles through revenge fantasies, childbirth classes, and stoic attempts to resolve her real-estate crisis. Her two best friends, former college roommates, help keep her spirits up when not dealing with their own troubles. But a more effective distraction arrives in the form of charismatic Theo Clarkson, Meg's former boyfriend, now a disgustingly successful bestselling novelist, who buys the house Meg's apartment is in and enlists her help in refurbishing it. Theo also steps in heroically as Meg's birth coach. After baby Frances is born, Andy reappears, and Meg, flush with the power and joy of new motherhood, is in the enviable position of choosing which of two very attractive men will become her daughter's dad. In the romance department, at least, the market is very high. Smart, sharp, and always entertaining. Leimbach exhibits a memorable comic voice.''
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

''Leimbach's world is more funhouse than haunted house.  She doesn't try to sweep the 'dust' under the rug, but neither does she dwell on the dark corners of her characters lives which, in this day of bleak, try-to-top-this memoirs and fiction comes as a blessed relief.  Rather, she illuminates the humor as well as the small (and not so small) sadnesses in our everyday world.''
Lea Odze Epstein, Bookpage

''Smart, sassy, funny, and furious is the narrator of this delightful novel...the voice is irresistible.  Meg, the heroine of her own story, presents her tale in a breathless gush of associations.  Often you know just where the associations will go; often you could never anticipate their skewed trajectory; in either case, you feel happily rewarded.''
Barbara Fisher, Boston Sunday Globe

''Inside the pages of this delectably comic novel I was, ahem, hugely entertained....Love And Houses is, simply put, laugh out loud funny. What makes the novel so compelling is not the story itself but Meg's inimitable voice and her acerbic take on everything from love and houses (obviously) to childbirth classes and Judith Lieber handbags...Reading this book is like spending an afternoon in a quirky old house with more charm than closets.  You wouldn't renovate a thing.''
Lauren Picker, New York Newsday

''Smart, witty.....a delight to read from beginning to end.''
The Bookseller 

''By the American author Marti Leimbach, this is a sharp and witty read.''
Family Circle

''A sparklingly funny book, full of warmth, friendship and wit...''
Sunday Mirror, July 27 1997

''Sharp and witty...''
Prima

''A breezy, wise-cracking discourse on the perils of the married state.''
Independent