Deb­o­rah Copak­en Kogan’s third book is juicy, with a big help­ing of smart. The nov­el is built on a scaf­fold­ing of excerpts from the red book, a class report of self-writ­ten snip­pets by Har­vard alums sketch­ing out their pre­vi­ous five years. It’s a bit of a gam­bit, but an effec­tive one, as it allows Kogan to quick­ly intro­duce her char­ac­ters, and their his­to­ries.

In the first red book pages, we learn that four ex-room­mates are prepar­ing to return to Cam­bridge for their twen­ti­eth reunion. They will arrive from dis­parate parts of the world and in var­i­ous states of moth­er­hood, daugh­ter­hood, career, mar­riage, and emo­tion­al con­di­tion.

The plot takes off with sirens blar­ing, lit­er­al­ly, when one alum­na, Addi­son, a half-heart­ed artist with a trust fund and three dis­af­fect­ed chil­dren, is arrest­ed for fail­ing to pay two-decade old park­ing tick­ets. The plot quick­ly thick­ens as her three ex-room­mates — the wife of an aging Hol­ly­wood direc­tor, a Paris-based jour­nal­ist, and a recent­ly-unem­ployed Lehmann Broth­ers exec­u­tive — decide how (and also because of some inevitable hard feel­ings, whether) to pay Addison’s fines, which have accrued to well over $100,000.

Amid the rol­lick­ing action, the real joy of the book comes from the char­ac­ters’ mus­ings. The plot requires that each pro­tag­o­nist ask the types of ques­tions we all con­sid­er as we turn the cor­ner on half a life: Am I liv­ing up to my poten­tial? Am I liv­ing the life I want to live? Am I loved? Do I love? Learn­ing how Kogan answers for each char­ac­ter — and those parts of each char­ac­ter we see in our­selves — will keep you up half the night read­ing, and then leave you wish­ing there were more.

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