Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s Back to Work She Goes is a little like Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise: a fictionalized version of life that entertains precisely because it is aspirational. The novel tells the story of Manhattan stay-at-home mom Lorelei Martin who walked away from a promising career in advertising to raise her two now-teenaged children. When the novel begins, Lorelei has set out to re-enter the workforce and attain her as-yet-unrealized goal of becoming an agency “honcho.”
With sharp humor and a healthy dose of contemporary cultural references, the book recounts Lorelei’s effort to get back on track by building her portfolio and experience through freelance work. The book in no way romanticizes the process: Lorelei is rebuffed by a headhunter, takes jobs at dodgy start-ups, and throughout battles an inner voice plagued with insecurity and self-doubt. Merkl touches on many of the real obstacles women in Lorelei’s situation face. Lorelei finds herself doing work that is beneath her level of accomplishment, working for people young enough to be her children, and uncertain of whether to own her age or try to appear younger to fit in.
In one particularly poignant scene, she shows up at a freelance job in a newly-purchased “cool” outfit: black Seven For All Mankind skinny jeans, a snug black t-shirt from Topshop, and leopard stilleto booties from, of all things, Jessica Simpson’s shoe line. When one of the young women at her office tells her it’s an “awesome outfit,” Lorelei barely has time to pat herself on the back before the colleague adds: “I wish I could get my mom to wear fun stuff, but she has a thing about grown women dressing like teenagers.” Ouch.
The book’s nuanced picture of the advertising world draws from the author’s experience. Now a freelance journalist and columnist for New York Family, Merkl spent 15 years as an award-winning advertising executive before her daughter was born. The idea of exploring a woman’s return to the corporate working world comes in part from Merkl’s effort 5 years ago – during the 2008 economic slump – to return to her advertising career. Although Merkl ultimately decided not to make that shift, her experience inspired her to tell an “uplifting story“ about the job market. Merkl’s nearly 30-year marriage also motivated her to eschew the typical “chick lit” personal reinvention narrative and instead focus on a middle-aged woman’s professional reinvention.
Back to Work exposes the complex, often charged, relationship between working moms and stay-at-home moms, and single women and those who are married. When the book begins, Lorelei’s best friend, Celia, is a never-been-married, childless career woman, and as the story progresses we see Celia’s frustration and sometimes bitterness as she struggles to find a partner. In creating characters that represent such opposite life choices, one almost gets the impression that Merkl doesn’t think that women can have it all. But (spoiler alert) this is a story with happy endings for everyone, so the larger takeaway just might be that you can’t have it all at the same time.
Although Merkl toyed with a more complex ending for Lorelei, in the end she triumphs and, finally, has it all – career, marriage, and kids– at the same time. Although I was initially put off by how unrealistically rapidly Lorelei achieves success (she wins an industry award for a campaign she works on as a freelancer), I quickly changed my mind-set as I thought about how bleak the real-life version of Lorelei’s life would read. If you’re looking for a dose of reality, pick up Emma Gilbey Keller’s nonfiction book The Comeback, which traces 7 real women’s return to work. But there’s a reason that the “Real Housewives” franchise has run for 43 seasons and spawned seven spin-offs: sometimes the fictionalized version of life is a lot more entertaining.
Barri Waltcher is a New York City-based career advisor who helps women navigate the transition from parenting back to a satisfying career. She is the co-founder of Mind Your Own Business Moms (MYOBmoms.com) and a frequent speaker on career topics.
