The Smart One by Jennifer Close

The Smart One by Jennifer Close

From the bestselling author of Girls in White Dresses, this funny and tender novel is "an engaging exploration of a thoroughly modern family dynamic" (People) and the ways in which we never really grow up, and the people we turn to when things go drastically wrong.

The Coffey siblings are having a rough year. Martha is thirty and working at J. Crew after a spectacular career flameout; Claire has broken up with her fiancé and locked herself in her New York apartment until her bank account looks as grim as her mood; and the baby of the family, Max, is dating a knockout classmate named Cleo and keeping a very big, very life-altering secret. The only solution--for all of them--is to move back home.

But things aren't so easy the second time around, for them or for their mother, Weezy. Martha and Claire have regressed to fighting over the shared bathroom, Weezy can't quite bring herself to stop planning Claire's thwarted wedding, and Max and Cleo are exchanging secretive whispers in the basement.

Girls in White Dresses is a best-selling novel by Jennifer Close. She is a graduate of Boston College and obtained her MFA in fiction writing from the New School in 2005. She was born and reared on Chicago's North Shore. She spent many years working in publications in New York. She now teaches creative writing at George Washington University in Washington, DC.