REVIEWS

First novel charms, saddens and amuses

Stay At Home by: Sarah Phelan Blanket Fort Publishing, June 15, 2006 ISBN# 0-9779927-0-5 247 pages

The undervalued world of women's traditional work has a large cast of characters: work-at-home moms, daycare providers, nurses, teachers and generally anyone else who cares for children and elderly people or cleans up after others.

It's rare that anyone doing this work figures in fictional romance plots. More often, those that capture the main roles are princesses, actresses, supermodels or international spies.

Consequently, when I read on the cover of Stay At Home that this was a romance about a daycare provider, I felt confident that writer Sarah Phelan was on track to writing something very, very right. She uses the everyday, ubiquitous world of a mom-of-two/family daycare operator as a backdrop to a romance plot with ample dramatic tension, twists and turns.

Janie Hadley, the main character, is a former beauty queen who has rejected the pageant scene along with the twisted family dynamic that dragged her into it. Now she is the wife of the stable but workaholic Scott. When celebrity rocker/actor Billy Smitts hires her to care for his five-year-old, attraction between the two grows, causing no shortage of conflict and calamity along the way.

What I liked best about this first work from Phelan was the respect with which she treats Hadley's work. "Very early in her daycare career, as Janie had tried to wing her way through the day, she had discovered that an unstructured day with a gaggle of preschoolers was a heartless, soulless enemy to be avoided at any and all costs" (p.40.) Clearly, Phelan understands the tensions of a day involving the care and amusement of the very young.

Phelan, perhaps because she is also a mom, understands that child care is challenging and often draining and exhausting. The job requires planning and preparation, not to mention a strong dose of personal authority expressed gently, as Phelan writes about Janie. "Another key element of her success was that she never let them [the kids] figure out that [they] outnumbered her" (p. 41.) This quote also demonstrates the quirky humour abundant in Phelan's writing, despite writing about a story that is ultimately a sadder slice of life.

I'm not a regular romance reader, but the depleted life of Janie and the pure escapist appeal that this book will offer so many overworked, under-appreciated moms kept me turning the pages way past my regular bedtime. Furthermore, Janie's interest in obeying social conventions about being the "good wife and mother" and the sacrifice that the role wrings from her touched me.

This book makes me think a little of the Shirley Valentine character, although in Stay at Home we get a 2006-style outcome. Funny, though, and sad, that despite all the changes that feminism has delivered to women over the past forty years, that the "reality" that happens to Janie is not so different from the reality that would have hit a woman in the 1950's. The playing field of the home is still rigorously uneven and despite all the sexual freedom we think we have, this book shows us our freedom still evades our reach.

Stay at Home, while written in an upbeat and positive style that is lovely to read, is ultimately a book about being trapped by the parameters we have set within our own minds. Not even the muscled biceps of a sensitive rock star can break through.

For more info about Phelan and her marketing campaign for Stay at Home, check billysmitts.com. She is offering a variety of free giveaways until October 18, 2006.

Who is your fantasy rocker? Send an email with the name of the rocker you'd like to see as the sexy hero of a romance novel to the LR Editor. You'll be entered in a draw where you could win a free copy of Stay at Home.