Some Kind Of Love; No one said becoming a stepmother was easy.(Love and Other Impossible Pursuits)(Brief Article)(Book Review)

Byline: Susan H. Greenberg

When we first meet Emilia Greenleaf, the narrator of Ayelet Waldman's novel, "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," she is dashing across New York's Central Park, dodging baby strollers and averting her eyes from every playground. This is because she recently lost her newborn daughter to SIDS, and can't bear the sight of other children. Whatever sympathy this may elicit in the reader is quickly tempered by the hostility she shows for her stepson, William, the neurotically precocious 5-year-old--who refuses to ice-skate without a helmet--she is en route to retrieve from preschool.

It's easy to see why William is so tentative about Emilia. She seduced his father, Jack--a borderline-too-good-to-be-true Jewish lawyer--at the law firm where they both worked, ...