Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Emma's Table: A Novel

Author: Philip Galanes

Narrator: Laurie King

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-20-12

Publisher: HarperCollins

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

From the moment Emma Sutton walks into the FitzCoopers auction house, the disgraced media darling knows exactly what she wants: an antique dining table. What she gets is a chance to set things right.

Fresh from a yearlong stretch in prison, Emma finds her life just as she left it - filled with glittering business successes, bruising personal defeats, rolling television cameras, and awkward Sunday dinners at home. She needs a clean slate - a second chance that might be provided by two unlikely saviors: Benjamin Blackman, a terminally charming social worker and Emma's part-time assistant, and one of Benjamin's most heartbreaking wards, an overweight little girl from Queens named Gracie.

Members Reviews:

A Place At The Table

The central character in Philip Galanes' second novel EMMA'S TABLE is Emma Sutton, a sixty-two-year-old "tarnished queen orf interior design," who is a household name and media darling, because of regular appearances on the Oprah Show but who has recently served a term in federal prison for income tax evasion. Although a huge success professionally in spite of her recent incarceration, she needs work in her personal life: for starters her relationships with her ex-husband Bobby who has recently moved back in with her, and their thirty-something-year-old daughter Cassy. In a word Emma is the high priestess of detail-- and Mr. Galanes gives us dozens of examples-- but she usually totally misses the big picture.

Add a gentle public school social worker Benjamin who is Emma's assistant on weekends, his vegan girlfriend Melora who teaches yoga, a mother with the burden of an obese nine-year-old daughter, a Japanese diplomat in search of a Nakashima table and a pet trainer to the mix, then invite them all to an elegant dinner, and you have a delicious comedy as light as a chocolate mousse and just as sweet.

Mr. Galanes' prose is easy and his humor gentle with practically a metaphor per page, most of which work very well. Cassy has "all whippet-sharp features," the overweight Gracie is "as wide as a penny that had been left on the train tracks" and is a child who loves colors and the "prettiest shade of yellow she can imagine of course is like a stick of butter." Emma, the always perfectionist, in a quite funny scene ruins a dinner because she has to cook too many vegetables with a roast to accommodate the vegan and throws the cooking time off. And in the most gentle and cleverest of scenes, Emma rearranges all of her husband's Bob's furniture when she discovers his hidden apartment.

As we expect in a comedy, in the end we like all these less-than-perfect characters, including Emma.

Smart, Sharp and Witty

I read voraciously, and was surprised to discover how very much I enjoyed this novel. It positively sings. Honestly, the prose pace is right in step with the story. Additionally, both theme and characterization are fully realized. Truly, this book is a well-written and thought-provoking look at a tranche de vie, i.e., New York social class and its effects on those who live in the city. This book is a permanent addition to my library (and that's my highest encomium).

Deeper read

When I first picked up this book, I thought it would be a chick lit book. Its not.

Author Philip Galanes has written a deeply moving, sad but uplifting novel.