TWO STEPS FORWARD

Two years after the events of The Steps (2003), Annabel and Lucy and the rest of their thoroughly blended families converge on Los Angeles for a summer of angst. Jack, Annabel’s father and Lucy’s stepfather, has moved from Australia to L.A. to further his career as an agent. Angelina, Annabel’s mother, is in L.A. working on a trial separation from Harvey and hoping to further her acting career. Wheaties, Annabel’s stepbrother, is spending the summer in L.A. with his mother and Ben, Lucy’s ex-stepbrother, is on holiday in California with his father and his new girlfriend. The four kids alternate in telling the tale, their first-person voices heavily spiced with hormones, as the children and their parents continue to work on their many-faceted relationships. Cohn, having constructed this fairly artificial emotional Petri dish, manages to populate it with fully developed characters, both adults and kids, who clash, compromise and make it all up with genuinely human imperfection. If it lacks some of the freshness of its predecessor, it stands nevertheless as an amiably honest snapshot of the steps’ lives, a little further on down the line. (Fiction. 10-14)