37

On the eve of her thirty-seventh birthday, former voice-over artist Fran Clark finds herself in a role she could never have envisioned: that of a surprisingly desperate housewife, who -- despite, or because of, her ad-exec husband and two children -- finds herself suffocating in her own life. She's far too cynical to take suburban life too seriously, and as she says, "If it weren't for the Happy Meal, several thousand women would have murdered their children." Yet, she can't seem to stop herself from entering a panicky spiral downward, depressed and drinking too much, until she hits rock bottom. It will take both her children and her two best friends counting on her more than they'd ever aniticipated for her to find the inner strength to rebuild her life. Fran's completely flawed yet completely lovable personality, filled with wit and charm, narrates this intimate, self-deprecating tale. Ultimately, it is a funny and poignant novel about one woman's brutally candid trip to the brink and back.