Ask Again Later – Jill A. Davis
Illness Changes New Yorker Emily’s Life for the Better
Emily lives her life with one foot out the door, afraid to take risks. But a sudden illness makes her rethink her life' s philosophy and her relationships.
Emily Rhode lives her life with one foot out the door. She is trained to be a corporate attorney, but when her mother Joanie suddenly finds a lump in her breast, Emily ends up taking a receptionist job at her estranged father’s law firm and moving in with her mother to become her care taker.
Going Home Again
Emily moves into her childhood bedroom – which Joanie has completely redone, with Emily’s things neatly packed into two cardboard boxes in the closet – to take care of her mother. Her older sister Marjorie is unavailable and for the most part uninterested in helping, despite the fact that she lives just a few city blocks away. She is busy with her own life – she is pregnant and due any day – and spends her days shopping for things she doesn’t need and cannot afford.
Blast from the Past
Emily’s mother’s cancer diagnosis affects her in a profound way. She listens as Joanie, who has stage 1 breast cancer and a tendency toward the dramatic, calls everyone listed in her address book to share the news with them that she is going to die. She also invites Jim, Emily’s father, to come and help her in her time of need. Emily is suddenly face to face with the most difficult part of her past. Her father, whom she referred to as “Jim” since childhood, was but a phantom while she was growing up – sometimes present, but never really there.
Emily accepts an offer of a low pressure receptionist job at Jim’s law firm as a chance to get to know the man she had once pretended was dead. She soon finds herself sharing a cab to the office with her father every morning and enjoying weekly martini lunches. She also finds out more than she bargained for in the process: that he was not the one to leave the family; rather, it was their mother who couldn’t stay. She also learns that she is more like her father than she ever imagined – that he, too, lives his life with one foot out the door.
She has just begun to accept that perhaps life is better when you live it – without one foot always outside the door – when tragedy strikes the family once again. An unexpected loss forces Emily to take a hard look at herself and the way she is living her life. She must decide whether pushing away her too perfect boyfriend and blowing off her mother is the way that she wants to live, or if she wants more for herself.
Jill A. Davis addresses true to life and sobering events with style and a great deal of humor. Ask Again Later may be classified as a chick lit novel, but the sophisticated writing and effortless humor makes it an entertaining read for nearly anyone.
About the Author
Jill A. Davis was a writer for Late Show with David Letterman, where she received five Emmy nominations. She has also written several television pilots and movie screenplays in addition to short stories. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Davis, Jill A.
Ask Again Later
New York, HarperCollins, February 20, 1007
