[Jacquelyn Mitchard] is a snappy writer with a deft eye for comedy and family foibles. Yet "The Breakdown Lane" tries so hard to be clever it reads more like a sitcom or a screenplay than a novel. Where is the rage, the deep-down guttural rage, when her unbearably distant, immature husband ditches his family of five? Or when her teenage daughter, a...

Too much talk, but not enough emotion in 'Breakdown Lane': North Final Edition