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The Ivy Chronicles featured as a
Richard & Judy Show
Summer 2005 read!
Watch the video here

From the Richard & Judy Show:

	RICHARD & JUDY'S SUMMER READ 2005! The Summer Read titles are all perfect holiday take-aways, lighter books to be enjoyed on the sun lounger, covering a wide a range of fiction genres. There’s something for everyone, whatever sex or age... Check out all the titles and find out more >>HERE!
	WEEK 6 - Wednesday 13th July 2005 The Ivy Chronicles By Karen Quinn Published by Pocket Books ISBN 0743492161
	WHERE WE WENT... Caprice went to France to tell you all about The Ivy Chronicles. Have a browse throught the following websites to find out all about where Caprice stayed and what she got up to whilst in the beautiful medieval village of Bormes-les-Mimosas... www.bormeslesmimosas.com www.vardestination.com www.domainedumirage.com We can also highly recommend the Restaurant Lou Poulid Cantoun at 6, place Lou Poulid Cantoun, 83230 Bormes-Les-Mimosas, t: +33 4 94 71 15 59 and Restaurant La Tonelle at 23 place Gambetta, 83230 Bormes-Les-Mimosas, t: +33 4 94 71 34 84/f: +33 4 94 01 09 37. If you like to get the old adrenaline flowing between chapters you can go waterskiing or wakeboarding at Ski Nautique. Contact Chrystel Juien on 06 13 61 27 18.
	WHERE OUR REVIEWERS WENT... Our reviewers were on a Hen Holiday in Majorca with Thomas Cook! Click here to see great deals for holidays this summer and save more with Thomas Cook's online discount! Greece, Turkey, Majorca and Cyprus all for under £200 per person! Find out more >>HERE!
WHAT WE THOUGHT... Model Caprice gives us her thoughts from Bormes Les Mimosas, Provence, in which she tells viewers more about the story. Writer Toby Young and child psychologist Dr Tanya Byron joined Richard & Judy in the studio...
	CAPRICE IN FRANCE! Caprice said that The Ivy Chronicles is a funny, fast-paced book about mid-life reinvention in Manhatten... "It's absolutely briiliant, really easy to read. One of those books that makes you feel really good and you just can't put down!"
	TOBY YOUNG & DR TANYA BYRON! Toby Young, himself a father of a two year-old daughter and a baby, said: “I thought The Ivy Chronicles was quite entertaining and funny in parts, it was full of zingy one liners. I didn't think it was a chicklit because of the age of the protagonist and also the issues that the book was dealing with - a middle aged woman transforming her life. It was a more a middle-aged-woman-lit and a comic novel generally”. "I thought it was interesting that it was written from a Jewish perspective and is full of fast-talking Jewish New Yorkers as I liked that part of New York when I lived there." He said that the book "describes accurately the intensity of competition of parents trying to get their children into primary schools in New York and the spectacle of parents jumping through hoops to get their children into the best schools". He had read recently in the UK press about a mother who spent all day queuing around the block in order to try and obtain a place for her child to go to the only decent school in Brixton. Some of the parents described within the book were not too dissimilar from a lot of New Yorkers that Toby came across during time living in the US. In The Ivy Chornicles many of the characters are obsessed with getting their kids into the best schools, not necessarily because they want this for their kids, but so that they can brag about it to their equally wealthy friends. Toby said that during his time in New York he came across a lot of professionals who were just obsessed with status generally. Child Psychologist and Little Angels presenter Dr Tanya Byron says The Ivy Chronicles is the type of book that you could take on holiday and dip in and out of easily while you were lounging by the pool. She says it was obvious Karen knew her subject matter really well. “I thought the book started out brilliantly, very Ally McBeal in the bizarre and surreal things that happened to Ivy. Some of the language used in the book was very amusing, describing the way adolescents grow into their noses was very funny. However, I really didn’t empathise with Ivy at all and I thought she was really weak. I wondered how did this woman survive for nearly 15 years in the uber tough corporate New York world." "I can easily see this will be a Hollywood film especially after the success of films like Bridget Jones, though I can’t see Catherine Zeta Jones as Ivy." "I think she described perfectly the intense pressure parents and schools put on children to succeed. Although I’m not that familiar with the Baby Ivys system in the US, you’d be surprised how similar the story is here in terms of pressure on small children to succeed." Tanya too has two children under the age of ten – a boy and a girl.
	RICHARD & JUDY'S SUMMER READ 2005 Find out more about all the other books in the Summer Read >>here

Quinn's debut novel, chronicling competition among Manhattan's most prestigious private kindergartens, is a laugh-out-loud delight. Ivy Ames, a former corporate executive, gets fired and discovers her unemployed husband cheating on her. Out goes the husband, the private school for her daughters and the nanny.

Ivy starts a consulting firm helping New York's elite get their children into posh kindergartens with a clientele as diverse as it is eccentric. A wealthy exe-cutive will stop at nothing to get her nanny-raised child into the best school, while another mother darkens her daughter's skin to give her a better shot at admission.

Amidst the humorous angst of Ivy's clients is a canny view of her evolution from a materialistic woman to a lady with integrity. Alternately hilarious and touching, the novel is a surefire winner. Inspired by Quinn's real-life experiences as the founder of a company assisting applicants to New York's schools, The Ivy Chronicles will hook readers from the get-go. (Feb., 342 pp., $23.95)

Some new books by first-time novelists:

"American Purgatorio" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by John Haskell. After a man's wife and car disappear during his brief stop at a New Jersey convenience store, he finds a map at home marked with a cross-country route. So he buys another car and sets out to look for her.

"The Ivy Chronicles" (Viking), by Karen Quinn. When her lofty career and posh lifestyle suddenly evaporate, a single mother in New York sets up shop helping affluent parents enter their children into exclusive private kindergartens.

"Please Don't Come Back From the Moon" (Harcourt), by Dean Bakopoulos. A teenage boy describes life in a Detroit working-class neighborhood where several families have been abandoned by their fathers.

"The Secret History of the Pink Carnation" (Dutton), by Lauren Willig. A Harvard University doctoral candidate on a research mission in London unearths the history of the Pink Carnation, an obscure spy who purportedly saved England from invasion by Napoleon.

"Snobs" (St. Martin's), by Julian Fellowes. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of "Gosford Park" (2001) offers a comic novel about a middle-class woman who enters the world of the British upper crust by wrangling a marriage proposal from an earl.

"The Almond Picker" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Simonetta Agnello Hornby. Sicily in 1963 is the setting as gossip flies and revelations unfold about a mysterious woman during the days following her death.

"The Hatbox Letters" (St. Martin's), by Beth Powning. A recent widow seeking comfort from her grandparents' old letters and papers also learns some tragic aspects of their lives.

"The Illuminator" (St. Martin's), by Brenda Rickman Vantrease. The adventures of a book illustrator in 14th Century England as he secretly helps create an English translation of the Bible and takes up with a widow battling the church and the crown for control of her assets.

411 on a Must-Read: "The Ivy Chronicles"
"The Ivy Chronicles" by newcomer Karen Quinn

Chick-lit books sure to enthrall

..."The Ivy Chronicles" (Viking, $23.95) by Karen Quinn is lighter reading, but enjoyable nonetheless.

After losing both her high-powered job and her marriage, Ivy Ames comes up with what she considers a brilliant idea. She'll start a new business in which she helps wealthy New Yorkers get their precious little ones into the best kindergartens in the city.

After reading about these moms and dads, you may feel a whole lot better about your own parenting skills. Like me, you'll enjoy deciding just how much of what you're reading is really true.

Funny book in the vein of "The Nanny Diaries"

If you liked The Nanny Diaries - and I know it was a little sad from a mom's persepctive - you will probably enjo this book I just finished.

Testimonials

Here are some reviews from people I know and their friends. Maybe they’re biased since we know each other, but I figure if they hadn't liked the book, they probably wouldn’t have said anything. —Karen Quinn

"I read Karen's book and loved it! She really captured the sometimes heartlessness of the city. It's the hot read of the young trophy moms of Park Avenue."
—Barbara Corcoran, NYC Real Estate Baroness and author of If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails and Other Lessons I Learned From My Mom

Karen, my very dear friend Sonia called me yesterday.... and here's the message she left on my answering machine word for word... i listened to it 5 times and wrote it down for you:

"Hi, Amy." (She said some stuff here about my son getting married that wouldn't interest you) "I wanted to let you know that I read the book "Ivy Chronicles" that your friend Karen Quinn wrote. Please tell her that i absolutely loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it." (She said it four times, i kid you not!) "I read it in one day... I just had to know what was going to happen. I thought the way she described the people was so funny. You would never believe people like that could possibly exist unless you lived or worked in New York. Anyways, I really thought it was great... so please tell her good luck with it and with all the fun stuff that's probably coming up now."

Hi Karen, first and foremost, I am loving The Ivy Chronicles! There are so many funny incidents that Ivy goes through, that I literally laugh out loud on the subway. And when people look at me, I raise the book cover clearly high so they can see what I'm reading. It's such a good read and I've been letting all my family & friends know about it.

I am so sorry that I couldn't make the signing, but I have been curled up in bed with a cold for 2 days with The Ivy Chronicles, enjoying the book enormously.

Thanks for the info on this book - it seems to be getting a lot of buzz (I think I recently saw something about it). Maybe I'll try to do a review someplace.

I'm in Europe and have been telling everyone here about the book.
As an aside, I just finished it today. I LOVED IT!!!!!!

I just finished your book... and can't believe how much FUN it was to read!!!! The story is extremely clever and amusing... and you do a great job of bringing the characters to life, making them "human" and making your readers care about them. The family portrayals were great... I couldn't wait to see which kids got in where!! And I also thought the romantic story lines were very well done...

I bought the book yesterday afternoon and I've already finished it (on the subway this morning.) I thought that it was terrific! The narrative was engaging, the plot full of unexpected twists and the characters either people I'd like to have over for dinner or analyze over lunch. Thanks so much for the recommendation - please congratulate your friend Karen on her splendid novel and her success in getting it published.

Hi Karen - I just finished your book! Wow! I just loved it. I don't how you pulled off going from so hilarious to being about a serious, ethical subject. But I just let the book carry me along. I truly could not put it down. The only problem I had was who (whom?) to picture in my mind as Ivy: You or Catherine Zeta-Jones! I just know the book will be a bestseller.

Ivy Aims for Facts & Fiction

If you've been through any school application process with your children—nursery, kindergarten, high school, private or public—The Ivy Chronicles (Viking, $23.95) will resonate. First time novelist Karen Quinn has turned her experiences as a kindergarten admissions advisor in Manhattan into thinly veiled, and very funny, fiction. If you enjoyed The Nanny Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada, you will appreciate the satire; The Ivy Chronicles skewers the same social milieu, and addresses the anxieties many parents in the city face.

Quinn doesn't expect the book to increase parents' high anxiety level, saying it "pokes fun at what parents do to get their children into school, and what schools do to torture the parents of applicants (at least the parents saw it that way)." She adds that the book is "an exaggeration of reality."

In The Ivy Chronicles, a corporate executive, blissfully name Ivy Ames, is downsized and starts her business (which is actually what happened to Quinn). Ivy is in business by herself; Quinn founded Smart City Kids with Roxana Reid, an educational social worker, after surviving the kindergarten admissions process with her daughter, Skyler, now 13. [Full disclosure: when Quinn was an admissions advisor, she advertised in these very pages; the fictional Ivy also advertises in Big Apple Parent]. Quinn also has a son, Sam, aged 12; he is the source of many of the one-liners in the book.

Ivy is truly down on her luck at the beginning; her husband has been out of work for a year, and Ivy catches him taking a bath with the wife of her business adversary. Quinn says, "Since so much of the book is based on my own experience, people often ask if I ever caught my husband with another woman. Can you believe people come out and ask that!? . My husband always jokes, 'No, she hasn't, at least not yet.' The truth is we've been married almost 24 years and we're very happy. But I don't think that would be too interesting to read about."

Quinn admits that the fees Ivy charges, $20,000 a case, and $300 an hour for tutoring, are "ridiculously high" and notes that "we charged much less." But she says the fee wasn't "entirely out of the question" since "another school admissions business that works with nursery school children charges $30,000 to assist a child in getting into college."

The book revives the urban legend of a young girl who is rejected from 35 private kindergarten programs (based on a true story). Quinn's twist is that the single, Jewish mother hires a black performance artist to pretend to be the father of the girl, with the help of spray-on tan. As Ivy notes, with the adopted, black, disabled child of a lesbian couple, diversity sells.

But in a serious vein, Quinn does have pointed advice for parents whose child does not get into a first-choice school: "You can choose not to take the school that isn't your first choice. Then after the application process has ended, you can go back to the school you really wanted and find out if they still have a spot to fill (that sometimes happens when everything shakes out). Then, you can reapply and hopefully get your child accepted. But that's very risky. You might end up with no place at all." Another choice is to have your child attend public school for a year, and then reapply.

And take note of Ivy's interview tips:

• Wax your daughter's mustache before her first visit. private schools take cute kids exclusively
• Do not put on a Power Point presentation at the parent interview unless you can do it in a way that seems spontaneous
• Under no circumstances should your child bring live birds to his interview, even if they are in a cage.
• If your child still uses a pacifier, carries a security blanket, or picks her nose, find a look-alike kid to interview on her behalf. When you send your kind to school in the fall, say the habit developed over the summer.

Go Ivy!

All About 'Ivy'

Book’s inspired Zeta-Jones to do a movie version

What can you say about a new novel that immediately inspires Catherine Zeta-Jones to option the movie rights and even star in?

“The Ivy Chronicles” (Viking, February 2005), Karen Quinn's first novel, is the latest example of private school gossip lit. There have been two others: "Admissions" and "Prep." For its part, "The Ivy Chronicles" is a thinly veiled, charming account of Quinn's work as a New York City private school admissions advisor to some of the richest and most powerful parents in the city as well as many others.

The story's main character, Ivy Ames, is euphemistically named "because so many parents are aiming for the Ivy League," explains Quinn. Ivy is a mother of two, who lands squarely on her feet after being fired, cheated on by her lazy husband, and humiliated in hundreds of other ways.

Quinn, like her heroine, had been the victim of corporate downsizing after which she decided to start the advisory firm Smart City Kids (a company that advises city parents on nursery, public and private school admissions). Today, Roxana Reid, co-founder with Quinn, runs the company; and Quinn, who no longer advises, is a full-time writer.

"Ivy is definitely based on me," confesses Quinn, who also has two children. "But, there are differences," she points out. Quinn is happily married, and "Ivy engages in unethical behavior, and is obsessed with status symbols and wealth. I wouldn't know a Birkin bag if you whacked me over the head with one!"

Are these stories true?

"As over-the-top as the book is," says Quinn, "I think there's a lot of truth in it, and I included a lot of true stories," she reveals. "Things that happened to me or to friends of mine. I've seen so many setbacks—people lose their job, get divorced and sick and somehow they pull through the loss and go on. But, when it came to my clients, I fictionalized their stories. I didn't want anyone to read the book and recognize himself."

According to Quinn, her characters embody the kinds of people who came to her for help. "They were captains of industry who lived in apartments what went on forever, or poor people who lived in the projects and wanted more for their kids," she says. "They were single mothers, gay parents, disabled children, people of color, couples with meddling in-laws, and clients from hell. So, each one was inspired by real events and real people."

For example, although Quinn admits she never actually had a Mafia boss as a client, she does reveal that the inspiration for Ivy's mobster client came from an actor who played a mobster—anyone's guess who.

All of the characters and the services Ivy provides have been melded into a mosaic of Quinn's former clients and work. In addition to the typical services parents who hire private school advisors expect, like making a suitable list of schools to which to apply, preparing children for ERB testing, parent and child interviews, tours, writing essays, thank you notes and first choice letters, Ivy, like Quinn, sometimes goes overboard.

"We even took women shopping for interview clothes, talked reluctant children into going on their school visits, mediated fights between parents, counseled parents who became distraught, sat Shiva with parents, visited them in the hospital, whatever it took," recounts Quinn of her days gone by as an advisor.

Also like Ivy, Quinn did her homework. One cold dark evening last winter, Quinn arrived at my office with a large bowl of "Gloomaway" bubble bath for a personal interview and to collect some of the many articles I'd written about private schools. About an hour later, she left with her bag full of material that was artfully threaded throughout the text for authenticity.

Quinn, who had never written anything more than an annual holiday letter (among the funniest and most interesting that this columnist receives), has, with "The Ivy Chronicles," produced an amazing accomplishment and one of which Quinn can be proud. Many of Quinn's former clients are planning to come to her readings. "I think they'll laugh when they read the book," Quinn says.

Quinn will be holding a myriad of book signings, readings and speaking engagements around the city in January and February and also around the country, and anyone who can make it should just for the fun of meeting the delightful and talented Karen Quinn.

"A cross between gossip lit and mommy lit, it's a breezy read...I'd give her a solid B+."