HOST FAMILY

Returning to the ever-eclectic People’s Republic of Cambridge, the scene of her successful debut (Mail, 1997), Medwed spins a similarly funny, if much less brisk, tale of romantic entanglements and divided loyalties as a woman struggles with starting over. It isn’t that Daisy Lewis, a former food-bank director turned supermarket ombudsman, is particularly happy in her marriage, but after 20 years with computer-virus exterminator Henry, she’s made the best of the situation. On the same evening they’re given an award by Harvard in recognition of their service to the international community, however, Henry precipitously announces that he wants out, and Daisy is devastated. Her devastation mutates into strange forms, first as a pick-me-up drink suggested by Daisy’s oldest friend turns into a pickup in one of Cambridge’s toniest bars, then as Henry gets food poisoning and she has to take him to the hospital—where she’s drawn by chance to parasite specialist Truman Wolff after his lecture on “host families.” Once Henry moves out, to live with and marry the young French student placed with them, Truman moves in, but despite their closeness, Daisy rebuffs his efforts to marry her. Complicating matters is the fact that her son and Truman’s daughter, in their first year at Harvard, came together even before she and Truman did. When the teenagers— rock-steady relationship comes apart at the seams, though, with Truman’s child the one to stray, Daisy puts son before lover and boots Truman out the door. From then on she’s in an agony of self-doubt and recrimination, with Henry suddenly popping up to say how much he misses her. Ultimately, of course, all is well. A clever romance, full of warm and wry touches—though Daisy’s final conundrum is a tad forced, sounding a minor discord in an otherwise charmingly harmonic story.