The Heights

Tim Welch is a popular history teacher at the Montague Academy, an exclusive private school in Brooklyn Heights, New York: “I was an odd-looking, gawky kid but I like to think my rocky start forced me to develop empathy, kindness, and a tendency to be enthusiastic. All of this, I’m now convinced, helped in my quest to be worthy of Kate Oliver.” Kate is not ordinary, but she aspires to be. She stays home with their two young sons in a modest apartment, trying desperately to become the parent she never had. Tim and Kate are happily getting by until one day their neat and tidy world is turned upside-down by Anna Brody, the new neighbor who moves into the most expensive brownstone in Brooklyn.

Anna is not only beautiful and wealthy; she’s also mysterious. And for reasons Kate doesn’t quite understand, even as all the Range Rover-driving moms jockey for access into Anna’s circle, Anna sets her sights on Kate and Tim and brings them into her world. It’s fun, dizzyingly fun, in fact, to pretend for a while that they belong in her life of privilege and excess. Then a secret invitation comes in a plain white envelope from an unlikely messenger, and the games Tim and Kate have been playing become a lot more complicated.

Peter Hedges writes interesting characters. I liked the premise of stay at home Mom taking a can't afford to turn down job and Dad taking a leave from teaching to stay at home.  There were many hilarious moments once he does, and as we see the neighbors from his eyes.  The story is told in the voices of mostly Kate and Tim,  a couple of others add their voices as well.