With A Window Opens, debut novelist Elisabeth Egan has created a protagonist for the Lean In generation.
Alice Pearse is a part-time editor and suburban wife and mom with plenty of time to volunteer at her kids' schools and supervise their homework, until her husband leaves his job at a law firm to go out on his own. Now the family's designated breadwinner, Alice jumps back into the fray, taking a position with the start-up Scroll, where her cutthroat colleagues are nearly half her age and her boss has an uncanny way of rattling her confidence: "How was it possible to be thirty-eight years old and still as afraid of someone as I was of my fourth-grade teacher?" she wonders. No plot spoilers here; let's just say Scroll won't be Alice's last rung on the corporate ladder.
— Leigh Haber
