A year ago, St. Louis businessman and author Martin Sneider rolled out “Shelf Life,” which its dust jacket called the first of four novels “about fashion and family.” Now, we have the second in the series, titled “Amy Unbound.”
Amy is Amy Feldman, wife of St. Louis business exec Josh Feldman. He has control of the family business, a high-end shoe-store chain. (Author Martin Sneider knows whereof he writes; he was president of St Louis-based Edison Bros., a fashion shoe and apparel specialty chain that went bankrupt in the late 1990s.)
The story begins in 2009, and in this Age of Amazon, Josh Feldman suffers at the cash register. As Sneider puts it, “It was the all-too-familiar story of retailing in the 21st century. The country was over-stored. Malls were declining in popularity. Discounting was rampant. And the internet was taking an increasing share of the customer’s wallet contents. The pressure on top execs at retailers was unremitting.”
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Naturally, the pressure also falls on Feldman’s wife. Sneider writes, “He wasn’t the person Amy had married. He was so busy being the Master of the Retail Universe that he barely gave any thought to Amy and their marriage. Assuming all would be what it always was.”
Much of this tale revolves around that marriage in trouble. Indeed, many pages take place inside the troubled mind of Amy. She decides to replace her depression about her marriage with some upbeat social work.
“She was simultaneously excited and nervous,” Sneider writes. “Thrilled to be starting down a new path and anxious to open herself up to new experiences, both professional and personal. But also anxious about the ongoing clash with Josh.”
Sneider flavors the plot with a poorly disguised sexual fling on Amy’s part, along with problems generated by Amy and Josh’s headstrong daughter. The tale takes a mildly optimistic turn toward its end. But readers must remember that the story has only reached the halfway mark. Without some pessimism ahead, how can the author fill two more volumes?
At any rate, Sneider falls short of a top-rate ranking as an author. One example: Instead of referring in his text to “the Los Angeles airport” and “the San Francisco airport,” he subjects readers to “LAX” and “SFX.” Some pages bear so many all-caps abbreviations that they look like a corporate memorandum.
Ah well. At least, this tale charms local readers with its dashes of local color (although that may change, given the author’s hint that Volume III will shift to New York City). But for now, we still have references to the Post-Dispatch, Blueberry Hill, Washington University and (as uttered by a character in Chicago), “Phyllis Schlafly from downstate.”
Harry Levins of Manchester retired in 2007 as senior writer of the Post-Dispatch.
