From Publishers Weekly
Goldsmith has hit a triple: in addition to the movie based on The First Wives Club and her recent novel, Bestseller, bruiting her name, she will have this funny, schmaltzy fairytale-cum-sitcom in the stores in time for the holidays. "Mom" is Phyllis Geronomus, a wisecracking 69-year-old widow who decides to leave Florida and return to Manhattan to help her grown children make something of their lives. The trouble is that her kids greet her arrival as they would a plague of locusts. Stockbroker Sigourney, nee Susan, unmarried at 40, has a sagging client list and is about to lose her elegant apartment overlooking Central Park. Entrepreneur Bruce, now out of the closet, fears his line of gay greeting cards is about to expire. Obese Sharon is married to a chronically unemployed loser. Domineering Mom will surely drive each of them over the edge. Their solution: to give Phyllis a makeover and a shopping session at Bergdorfs, put her up at the Pierre and take her to a charity ball where she can meet a rich old geezer who will both marry her and save her kids from financial ruin. The premise is pure TV farce, fueled by Goldsmith's clever dialogue and acerbic one-liners. Her takes on the relationships between parents (especially Jewish parents) and their children, and between the bickering siblings themselves, are on-target. Through events that escalate from the ridiculous to the preposterous, Goldsmith steers the principals to an ultra-happy ending and an inescapable conclusion: all families are dysfunctional, but every dysfunctional family is wacky in its own way. $175,000 ad/promo; film rights to Paramount. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Entertainment Weekly
Three grown children try to snag an elderly bachelor for Mom when she ditches her Florida retirement home.


From Booklist
You can't expect authors to come up with a hit every time. You also wouldn't expect utter nonsense after such a well-researched, full-bodied novel as The Bestseller. It seems that HarperCollins pushed Goldsmith to complete her next novel so that its release would coincide with the release of the movie First Wives Club, adapted from her 1992 novel. Marrying Mom features saucy Phyllis, a retired New Yorker living in Miami, bored out of her wits now that her husband Ira has passed on--not that he was any barrel of laughs, as Phyllis continually points out. When she announces that she's moving back to New York to be with her three children, she purposely does not tell them because she knows how little she is missed. She wants to make up for the lack of attention she gave them when they were young. Poor mothering skills should not be blamed for creating these three whiny brats, though. Sig is lonely and living extravagantly on dwindling resources, Bruce is a gay man with bad business sense who cannot forgive his mother for anything, and Sharon is fat and miserable with two bratty kids and a lazy husband. There is really no one to like here, except perhaps the old guys the kids continually try to fix up with their mother. Mary Frances Wilkens


From Kirkus Reviews
Goldsmith follows The Bestseller (p. 768) with a light, contrived romance about a Jewish mother and her three unsettled children. Mom is Phyllis Geronomous (n‚e Phyllis Steen, so Geronomous seems a big improvement), and she lives in South Florida. While at 69, she's no longer young, she finds little appealing about the lifestyle of her many elderly neighbors, who restlessly patrol the local boardwalk and look forward only to early-bird dinners at the Rascal House. Dedicated to finding something a little less terminal, Phyllis bids farewell to her dead husband Ira at the cemetery--he doesn't answer, but he never said a lot when he was alive either--and returns to New York City to get into the hair of her unhappy children: Sigourney (n‚e Susan), a 40ish stockbroker whose business and love life are falling apart; gay Bruce, whose ``Queer Santa'' greeting-card line is failing and whose lover won't commit to marriage; and fat, whiny Sharon, whose husband Barney is a deadbeat. Guilty because she never had time to go to PTA meetings, Phyllis now wants to fix their lives. At the same time, they want her out of their hair and back with the palm trees. So, the three launch Operation Geezer Quest to find Phyllis a rich husband, complete with a Bergdorf Goodman makeover and a suite at the Pierre. Along the way, with enough Yiddish for a whole season of The Nanny, Phyllis doles out tough love and wise words. Finally, everyone's life is improved, and Mom begins her eighth decade with good sex, a large sapphire ring, and an offshore bank account in the Caymans. Some laughs and refreshing senior-citizen romance, but more like the outline for a TV sitcom than a novel. (Film rights to Paramount; Literary Guild Selection; $175,000 ad/promo; TV and radio satellite tours) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Midwest Book Review
Sig, Bruce, and Sharon regard Phyllis Geronomous as the mother from hell. When they learn that she plans to leave her retirement home to relocate near her children, they are an unhappy trio. With their sanity hanging in the balance, the three siblings decide that their mother needs to marry a rich elderly person. Besides keeping Phyllis out of their hair, a wealthy step-father could help them with their own financial difficulties. Phyllis, who thinks a father figure would help her children, reluctantly agrees to their plan. Phyllis chooses her own potential spouse, Monty Montague, her aisle-mate on the plane trip to New York. The siblings' research shows that Monty meets their criteria. They are elated when Monty and Phyllis become engaged. Their initial euphoria turns to horror when Monty's checks bounce making it appear that he is searching for a wealthy spouse. Monty leaves in a snit and a heart-broken Phyllis acquiesces to her children's demands to search for a replacement. Still her heart remains with Monty, a poor fabricator, who proves that appearances can be deceptive. Phyllis, with the intervention of fate, manages to find true happiness even as she teaches her children a well-deserved lesson. Olivia Goldsmith has written a surefire hit in Marrying Man. This mainstream novel poignantly touches on elderly romances and May-December marriages. The characters are very human and subsequently flawed, but never the less, manage to move readers with the tumultuous feelings that they inspire. This is a beautiful, heartwarming tale that will linger in the audience's memory long after the book is closed.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Phyllis Geronomous is witty, blunt, razor sharp - and the despair of her family. She's a senior citizen and an original, still trying to run the lives of her three grown children. As far as they're concerned, Phyllis's best attribute is that she's a Florida resident, while they live in New York. But then Phyllis decides that retirement and spending the holidays alone in Miami are not for her, and she's going to move back to the Big Apple. Sigourney, Sharon, and Bruce are horrified. They just can't let crazy Phyllis ruin their lives all over again. Murder is out - purely for practical reasons. And Christmas is unbearable enough without a visit from Mom - and what if she stays as she's threatening to do? Sig is a single, stylish, control-freak stockbroker who is terrified of her downsized professional and personal life; Sharon is a neurotic suburban housewife with two young children and an unemployed husband; and Bruce - the baby of the family - is a gay greeting-card entrepreneur whose business is folding faster than you can say "Queer Santa." Phyllis's arrival in New York will be the unraveling of them all. Only Sig has the ideal solution: They'll join forces and marry Mom off. Then she'll be someone else's problem. They call the plan "Operation Geezer Quest," but where are they going to find an old, deaf, dumb, blind, and, above all, rich groom?

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Daily News

Witty... A quick read, full of funny New York moments and ready-for-the-big-screen charm... Perfect comic relief.

Naples Daily News

A raucous comedy... Goldsmith keeps readers laughing.... [She] has scored another hot book and showed us yet another side of her versatile personality.

Herald Sun

...she(Goldsmith) does great justice to the humor and irony of her story.

New York Daily News

Witty... A quick read, full of funny New York moments and ready-for-the-big-screen charm... Perfect comic relief.

Naples Daily News Naples