Paula Marantz Cohen's triumphant first novel, Jane Austen in Boca, was an inspired blend of classic English literature and modern American manners. Her new novel heads north to the seemingly quiet suburban town of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, for a comedy that even Shakespeare couldn't have imagined. Carla Goodman is worried. Her husband, a gastroenterologist in private practice, is coming home frazzled because medicine isn't what it used to be. Her son's teachers want to put him on Ritalin to stop him from wreaking havoc on the fifth grade. And her cranky twelve-year-old daughter has a bas mitzvah coming up. But it's Carla's sweet, widowed mother, Jessie Kaplan, who really has her baffled. Jessie has suddenly "remembered" that she was Shakespeare's girlfriend---the Dark Lady of the sonnets---in a previous life. Can even the famed Dr. Leonard Samuels, psychiatrist and author of the self-help book How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Mother-in-Law, help with problems like these? Witty, engaging, and wickedly observant, Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan is an unpredictable tale of love, loss, and family rites of passage. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly A looming bat mitzvah and a mother who believes she's the reincarnation of Shakespeare's Dark Lady cause no end of trouble for the suburban heroine of this corny but hilarious second novel by Cohen (Jane Austen in Boca). Carla Goodman of Cherry Hill, N.J., is saddled with a 12-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who seems to be in "a perpetual state of PMS," a 10-year-old son, Jeffrey, who is "on his way to becoming a fifth-grade delinquent," and a gastroenterologist husband who is having trouble maintaining a private practice ("It's one thing to look up butts and get rich.... It's another to do it for nickel and dimes"). At the same time, Carla's widowed mother, Jessie, starts making references to mead and doublets, apparently remembering her former life as the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Cohen, who is developing a sparkling reputation for bringing the classics into contemporary fiction, paints in broad strokes but hits the mark with this domestic comedy. When Carla turns to renowned psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Samuels, famous for his bestselling How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Mother-in-Law, for advice, the humor escalates. Anyone-Jewish or not-who has ever attended a bat or bar mitzvah will find Cohen's take on the preparations and planning for this rite of passage spot on. By the end of this thoroughly entertaining romp, the author convincingly resolves all of Carla's family dilemmas with large doses of humor and heart. Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review "Though Cohen's knack for gentle satire earns some terrific laughs, this buoyant novel's power stems from the author's deep sympathy for her conventional characters. She mocks, yes, but from a place of tremendous understanding." ―Newsday --This text refers to the Paperback edition.