Based
on the books that we've reviewed this year, the following lists our most
recommended reads. Last year I worried about all the books left off the
list because I didn't have time to review as many novels as I would have
liked. This year, I have lots of help and the number of MostlyFiction.com's
reviews have tripled. So this year offers a different challenge: selecting
the best books, and including those that I might not have read myself.
In some cases this is easy since when a reviewer is excited about a book,
I tend to hear this before the review comes in. Other times, you can see
it in the review itself. (And yeah, I did finally ask everyone.) Anyhow,
the judgement criteria does not change: these books are selected for their
quality of writing, creativity and lasting impression -- no matter who
got to read the book. And nearly all of these are highly recommended for
reading group material. So in no particular order...
The
2002 Top Picks (click on title to jump to short summary):
Empire
Falls by Richard Russo
Published
May 2001; April 2002 in paperback
Miles
Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years,
a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect.
What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter
Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or
maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s
taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps
it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in
town–-and seems to believe that “everything” includes
Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep
into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with
hilarity, heartache, and grace.
On
the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony
Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge
into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching
Cecilia is their housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner, a childhood
friend who, along with Briony’s sister, has recently graduated
from Cambridge. By the end of that day the lives of all three will
have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed
a boundary they had never before dared to approach and will have
become victims of the younger girl’s scheming imagination.
And Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt for which
will color her entire life.
Pi
Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic
knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices
not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When
Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America
aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound
for new homes. The
ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions
a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound
Bengal tiger.
The
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Published June 2002
Fourteen-year-old
Susie Salmon is already in heaven when she narrates the events of
this story. She tells us what her new home is like, about her murder,
the after events and how her family and friends deal with her death,
especially over the years. Though one would expect a story of this
nature to offer lots to wallow over; it doesn't. Instead it maintains
an almost upbeat tone offering lots of insight into family, especially
a family dealing with grief, and shows how life eventually goes
on for all concerned.
Spilling
Clarence by Anne Ursu
Published January 2002
In
the fictional town of Clarence, Minnesota, a breakroom microwave
sparks a smoky fire at the pharmaceutical factory and triggers a
massive chemical spill. Panic-stricken and paralyzed, the townspeople
wait until the all-clear signal to assure them everything's back
to normal. Except that it isn't. Over the coming days, the citizens
of Clarence fall under the spell of a strange and powerful drug
that unlocks their memories. They become trapped by their own reminiscences:
of love and death, of war and childhood, of family they've lost
and sins they've committed. Beautifully rendered with a light comic
touch, this bittersweet first novel is about more than the sum of
its beguiling parts. It's about the need to remember, and about
the bliss of forgetting. A universe peopled by exquisitely drawn
characters, Spilling Clarence is a funny, moving story with
a truly original premise that introduces the talents of an exciting
new writer.
The
Dive from Claussen's Pier by Ann Packer
Published September 2002
Carrie
Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She’s had the same
best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same
boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can
remember. It’s with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three,
her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change,
an upheaval, for a chance to begin again. That chance is granted
to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie
has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and
the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people
we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from
someone in need? As our reviewer says, this is "the kind of
old fashioned story that existed before writers felt they had to
make their presence known on every page."
Family
Matters by Rohinton Mistry
Published September 2002
This
new novel takes us to Bombay in the mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel is
a seventy-nine-year-old Parsi widower and the patriarch of a small
discordant family. Beset by Parkinson’s disease and haunted
by memories of the past, he lives in a once-elegant apartment with
his two middle-aged stepchildren – Coomy, bitter and domineering,
and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. When Nariman’s
illness is compounded by a broken ankle, Coomy plots to turn his
round-the-clock care over to Roxana, his sweet-tempered sister.
She succeeds, but not without cost, and eventually Nariman takes
up residence with Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two young
sons. The effect of the new responsibility on Yezad, who is already
besieged by financial worries, pushes him into a scheme of deception
involving Vikram Kapur, his eccentric, often exasperating employer
at Bombay Sporting Goods Emporium. This sets in motion a series
of events – a great unravelling and a revelation of the family’s
love-torn past – that leads to the narrative’s final outcome.
Reta
Winters has started a new sort of life. After 44 years she is discovering
the meaning of loss for the first time. For all of her forty-four
years, Reta has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving
family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction,
novels "for summertime." This placid existence cracks
open one fearfulday when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops
out of life to sit on a ritty street corner, silent but for the
sign around her neck that reads "GOODNESS." Reta's search
for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns
into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where in
life we find meaning and hope. Warmth, passion and wisdom come together
in Shields's remarkably supple prose. Unless, a harrowing
but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing,
proves her mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.
The
Cyclist by Viken Berberian
Published March 2002
The
enigmatic narrator is a young trainee of the Academy, a terrorist
group in the present-day Middle East. This unnamed, transnational
pawn has a single mission: to deliver a bomb by bicycle to a hotel,
where it will explode, killing hundreds of civilians. But his story
is anything but simple. Combining surrealism, tragedy and humor,
The Cyclist is a journey into the unsettling workings of
the terrorist mind. Even as the narrator ponders his mission, only
his musings about food and love reveal clues to his nationality
and his agenda. But can such a zestful connoisseur also be a true
agent of political violence? This is a witty and wildly inventive
novel.
The
Rainbow Singer by Simon Kerr
Published June 2002
The
narrator of this harrowing and hilarious novel is Wil Carson, a
former Protestant ex-thug from Northern Ireland. Wil’s adolescent
hatred of Catholics is inherited from his bigoted father, but his
sardonic twist on life as a "no-hoper from the Backstreets
of East Belfast" is all his own. When the opportunity of a
lifetime arises -- a chance to travel to America as part of a church-sponsored
peace project -- Wil decides to swallow his prejudices and go along
with the program. But his goodwill only goes so far, and a series
of tragicomic events lands him in a Wisconsin penitentiary. Wil’s
stint behind bars leaves him plenty of time to review his past deeds,
ponder the choices he’s made, and reflect on a life of mixed
blessings and curses. The Rainbow Singer offers a unique
slant on Northern Ireland’s ethnic strife as well as an utterly
original and distinct new voice in fiction.
A
scary, funny novel—a riff on recent history and the American
obsession with assassination. It's winter in New Hampshire, the
economy is booming, the vice president is running for president,
and his Secret Service people are very, very tense. Meet Vi Asplund,
a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes
home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius
who just might be going mad—and is poised to make a fortune
on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers.
Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and
in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague
fantasies of violence. Through a gallery of vivid characters—heroic,
ignoble, or desperate—Mark Costello's novel limns the strategies,
both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.
The
Resurrectionists by Michael Collins
Published September 2002
The
solitude of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Michael Collins's heart
of darkness in this compelling story of the unquiet dead. Almost
thirty years ago, when Frank Cassidy was five, his parents burned
to death in a remote Michigan town. Now Frank's uncle is dead too,
shot by a mysterious stranger who lies in a coma in the local hospital.
Frank, working menial jobs to support his unfaithful wife and two
children, takes his family north in a series of stolen cars to dispute
his cousin's claim on the family farm. Once there, however, Frank
also wants answers to questions about his own past: Who really set
the fire that burned the family home and killed his parents? Will
the stranger, who hangs between life and death, be able to shed
light on long-buried secrets? As the television blares the aftermath
of the Watergate scandal, news of Jim Jones, and endless sitcom
reruns, simple answers -- and the promise of the American dream
-- seem to recede from Frank's grasp. Brilliant and unsettling,
The Resurrectionists is an ironic yet chilling indictment
of American culture in the seventies and a compassionate novel about
a man struggling to overcome the crimes and burdens of his past.
In
his luminous new novel, the author of Waiting deepens his portrait
of contemporary Chinese society while exploring the perennial conflicts
between convention and individualism, integrity and pragmatism,
loyalty and betrayal. Professor Yang, a respected teacher of literature
at a provincial university, has had a stroke, and his student Jian
Wan—who is also engaged to Yang’s daughter—has been
assigned to care for him. What at first seems a simple if burdensome
duty becomes treacherous when the professor begins to rave: pleading
with invisible tormentors, denouncing his family, his colleagues,
and a system in which a scholar is “just a piece of meat on
a cutting board.” Are
these just manifestations of illness, or is Yang spewing up the
truth? And can the dutiful Jian avoid being irretrievably compromised?
For in a China convulsed by the Tiananmen uprising, those who hear
the truth are as much at risk as those who speak it. At once nuanced
and fierce, earthy and humane, The Crazed is further evidence
of Ha Jin’s prodigious narrative gifts.
The
Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts
April 2002
This
tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African
American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a
black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar
Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring, page-turning
story of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave
as she makes her way to freedom.
Presented
here unaltered and under its author's original title, The Bondwoman's
Narrative tells of a self-educated young house slave who knows her
life is limited by the brutalities of her society, but never suspects
that the freedom of her plantation's beautiful new mistress is also
at risk...or that a devastating secret will force them both to flee
from slave hunters with another powerful, determined enemy at their
heels.
Jamaica
Kincaid's first obsession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly
to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur
who makes his living along the wide, open roads that pass the only
towns he has ever seen and the graveyard where he will be buried.
The sun shines squarely overhead, the ocean lies on every side,
and suppressed passion fills the air.
Misery
infects the unstudied, slow pace of this island and of Mr. Potter's
days. As Kincaid's narrative unfolds in linked vignettes, his story
becomes the story of a vital, crippled community. Kincaid strings
together a moving picture of Mr. Potter's ancestors -- beginning
with memories of his father, a poor fisherman, and his mother, who
committed suicide -- and the outside world that presses in on his
life, in the form of his Lebanese employer and, later, a couple
fleeing World War II. Within these surroundings, Mr. Potter struggles
to live at ease: to purchase a car, to have girlfriends, to shake
off the encumbrance of his daughters -- one of whom will return
to Antigua after he dies, and will tell his story with equal measures
of distance and sympathy.
A
Winter Marriage by Kerry Hardie
Published December 2002
"She
met him at a wedding she had gone to only because she needed a husband
and a wedding wasn't a bad place to begin looking. . . . And he
took to her, he liked her crooked straightness from the start."
Hannie Bennet has arrived at the situation she dreads most: she
is a woman of a certain age, recently widowed, and her only prospect
for protecting herself and all she holds dear is to marry again.
And soon.
In
Ned Renvyle she finds her perfect foil. It is not love, certainly,
but marriage offers other comforts. They enter their union clear-eyed,
each making certain accommodations and gaining certain benefits.
Hannie believes that this time she can make it work. But their move
to Ned's ancestral home in the Irish countryside brings vexations
Hannie never imagined-judging eyes, ancient secrets, a brooding
and beautiful landscape. Hannie also has a secret of her own, and
even this remote and stately country life cannot contain it entirely.
A visitor unleashes a maelstrom of jealousy, deceit, blackmail,
and terror, and the violence scarcely contained by age-old understandings
becomes the true crucible for a marriage's strength.
Olivia,
a Canadian filmmaker, is writing from a Tahitian jail, piecing together,
her troubled past and her family's buried history for the daughter
she gave up to adoption years before. The search for her own father,
a pilot missing since the Korean War, has, brought her to the South
Seas and landed her behind bars on a trumped-up murder charge. In
the stillness of her cell, Olivia ponders the meaning of the secret
journals she discovered after her mother's death. Their author is
her ancestor Frank Henderson, a British naval officer who, as a
young man, came to these same waters a hundred years before. The
journals tell of his terrifying adventures in West Africa and an
extraordinary three-year voyage to Polynesia with Queen Victoria's
grandsons -- Prince George (later George V) and his brother Prince
Eddy, who would die young and disgraced. Frank's long-ago revelations,
which include a fleeting love affair with a Polynesian girl, lead
Olivia to understand her father's disappearance and her mother's
strange attitude toward the past. Through unforgettable characters
and a deep understanding of the landscape and culture of the South
Seas, Henderson's Spear tells a mesmerizing story about the patterns
of history and the accidents of love.
Captain
Saturday by Robert Inman
Published January 2002
Will
Baggett, TV weatherman, is Raleigh, North Carolina's biggest celebrity.
With adoring fans, a nice house, a son in medical school, and a
beautiful wife who is one of the town's top real-estate brokers,
Will's life is pretty much exactly the way he wants it. But
his well-ordered world comes crashing down when a heartless conglomerate
buys the TV station and decides that Will is a relic of the past.
Trying to get his job back, he gets himself arrested and badly injures
both his knee and his pride. That's when Will starts to realize
that more than just his career is in jeopardy: his marriage is coming
apart and his son doesn't like him very much. Just when he thinks
he's hit bottom, the past he thought he didn't have comes calling
in the form of his cousin, Wingfoot Baggett, who takes Will for
some R&R back home on the Cape Fear River. How Will comes to
terms with his history, resolves his trouble with the law, gets
to know his son—and himself—and tries to recapture the
magic of his marriage is the subject of Robert Inman's graceful,
comic, and poignant novel.
In
the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz
Published September 2002
In
the Walled Gardens is a powerful political novel and, as
our reviewer points out, "equal in scope and in art to
the best works by Greene, Naipaul, and other masters of this
important genre." Anahita Firouz belongs to the last generation
in Iran who witnessed an entire way of life fall apart. This
novel is her evocation of that complex and alluring world —
a beautifully written portrait of a now-vanished era, and an
unforgettable, revolutionary love story.
Lovely
Green Eyes by Arnost Lustig
Published April 2002
She
has hair of ginger and lovely green eyes, and she has just been
transported with her family from Terezín to Auschwitz.
In short order, her father commits suicide, and her mother and
younger brother are dispatched to the gas chambers, but young
Hanka Kaudersová, working for Dr. Krueger, is still alive.
Faced with the choice of death or working in a German military
brothel on the eastern front, she chooses life, and passes as
an Aryan. Hanka fights cold and hunger, fear and shame, sustained
by her loathing of the men who visit her and by a fierce desire
to live. This remarkable novel soars beyond nightmare to leave
the reader with a transcendent sense of hope.
The
Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan
Published February 2002
An
enchanting seventeenth-century epic of grand passion and adventure,
this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India's
most legendary and controversial empresses -- a woman whose
brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles, and whose
love shaped the course of the Mughal empire. As our reviwer
points out, "The Twentieth Wife, soars through time with
historical detail, political tension and, throughout, a nearly
unrequited love story. Political power, social customs and court
life in the Mughal Empire are rendered with the sense of the
poet and the eye of the researcher. Not only is the reader treated
to lyrical descriptions of sight, smell, texture, and sounds
of the time, but also to authentic historical and social details.
Lush landscapes, brilliant silk and muslin clothing, the scents
of an evening grilled meal, and floral trees blowing in the
breeze all bring the dusty and nearly forgotten story of a woman
- without whom there may be no Taj Mahal - to life."
Kleopatra
by Karen Essex
Published August 2002 in paperback
The
cherished daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, she fought the resentments
of a subjugated people and the treachery of her own siblings.
Defending her throne from hostile forces on every side, she
endured exile, found love, and raised a mercenary army against
her enemies...all before she was twenty years old. She was Kleopatra.
And this is her untold story. Sweeping
from the exotic intrigue of ancient Alexandria across the northern
African desert to the chaos and corruption of Rome, this novel
about one of the most powerful and alluring leaders of all time
combines years of exhaustive research with storytelling rich
in drama and excitement. The result is the most authentic, entertaining,
and endlessly surprising account of the Egyptian queen ever
written.
It’s
1835 and the relentless glare of the late July sun has slowed
New Orleans to a standstill. When Hesione LeGros--once a corsair’s
jeweled mistress, now a raddled hag--is found slashed to death
in a shanty on the fringe of New Orleans’s most lawless
quarter, there are few to care. But one of them is Benjamin
January, musician and teacher. He well recalls her blazing ebony
beauty when she appeared, exquisitely gowned and handy with
a stiletto, at a demimonde banquet years ago. Who would want
to kill this woman now--Hessy, they said, would turn a trick
for a bottle of rum--had some quarrelsome “customer”
decided to do away with her? Or could it be one of the sexual
predators who roamed the dark and seedy streets? Or--as Benjamin
comes to suspect--was her killer someone she knew, someone whose
careful search of her shack suggests a cold-blooded crime? Someone
whose boot left a chillingly distinctive print . . .
What
does it mean to be a good mother? For career-driven assistant
district attorney Nina Frost, the question inspires pangs of
guilt familiar to all parents torn by the demands of home and
office. But whereas most parents lie awake at night vividly
conjuring the worst scenarios that could befall their children
in their absence, Nina lives the reality of such crises -- and
it's her job to do something about them. Nina Frost prosecutes
child molesters -- and in the course of her everyday work, she
has endured the frustration of seeing too many criminals slip
through the system and walk free. Then her own son ends up mute
from traumatic abuse. Morally complex suspense fiction.
Reversible
Errors by Scott Turow
Published November 2002
Rommy
"Squirrel" Gandolph is a Yellow Man, an inmate on
death row for a 1991 triple murder in Kindle County. His slow
progress toward certain execution is nearing completion when
Arthur Raven, a corporate lawyer who is Rommy's reluctant court-appointed
representative, receives word that another inmate may have new
evidence that will exonerate Gandolph. Arthur's opponent in
the case is Muriel Wynn, Kindle County's formidable chief deputy
prosecuting attorney, who is considering a run for her boss's
job. Muriel and Larry Starczek, the original detective on the
case, don't want to see Rommy escape a fate they long ago determined
he deserved, for a host of reasons. Further complicating the
situation is the fact that Gillian Sullivan, the judge who originally
found Rommy guilty, is only recently out of prison herself,
having served time for taking bribes. Scott Turow's compelling,
multidimensional characters take the reader into Kindle County's
parallel yet intersecting worlds of police and small-time crooks,
airline executives and sophisticated scammers -- and lawyers
of all stripes. No other writer offers such a convincing true-to-life
picture of how the law and life interact, or such a profound
understanding of what is at stake -- personally, professionally,
and morally -- when the state holds the power to end a man's
life.
Chasing
the Dime by Michael Connelly
Published October 2002
Henry
Pierce has a whole new life—new apartment, new telephone,
new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages,
he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages
on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some
kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's
world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a nighttime
world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities.
Pierce tumbles through a hole, abandoning his orderly life in
a frantic race to save the life of a woman he has never met.
Pierce's skills as a computer entrepreneur allow him to trace
Lilly's last days with some precision. But every step into Lilly's
past takes Pierce deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy—and
a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds
dear.
Flung
back in time by a mysterious accident, Sam Vimes has to start
all over again. He must get a new name and a job, and there's
only one job he's good at: cop in the Watch. He must track down
a brutal murderer. He must find his younger self and teach him
everything he knows. He must whip the cowardly, despised Night
Watch into a crack fighting force -- fast. Because Sam Vimes
knows what's going to happen. He remembers it. He was there.
It's part of history. And you can't change history . . . But
Sam is going to. He has no choice. Otherwise, a bloody revolution
will start, and good men will die. Sam saw their names on old
headstones just this morning -- but tonight they're young men
who think they have a future. And rather than let them die,
Sam will do anything -- turn traitor, burn buildings, take over
a revolt, anything -- to snatch them from the jaws of history.
He will do it even if victory will mean giving up the only future
he knows. For if he succeeds, he's got no wife, no child, no
riches, no fame -- all that will simply vanish. But if he doesn't
try, he wouldn't be Sam Vimes..
American
Gods by Neil Gaiman
Published June 2001; April 2002 in paperback
Shadow
is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to
live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until
he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying
home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a
strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The
man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow
than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is
coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same...
Stay
opens with Aud, normally the epitome of cool-under-fire contained
competence, disintegrating with grief and guilt over the violent
death of her lover. These emotions are new to her, and she has
moved deep into the North Carolina woods, away from people,
afraid of what she might do if pushed. Into her refuge comes
her oldest friend asking an impossible favor: to track down
his missing fiancée, a woman Aud despises. The police
won’t take his concern seriously, and Aud – an ex-cop
whose sense of right and wrong has little respect for the law
– is the only person he can turn to for help. But to follow
the woman’s trail to New York City, she must leave the
shelter of her trees and confront a series of physical, moral,
and emotional challenges that she has been dodging for weeks,
months, and years. None of her choices are easy.
Stay
is a dazzling showcase for Griffith’s literary talent.
She layers an array of different elements – urban tension
and pastoral beauty, complex characters and white-knuckled narrative
suspense, lyric prose and visceral violence – into a novel
of depth, subtlety, and riveting noir storytelling.
Hell
To Pay by George Pelecanos
Published March 2002
Derek
Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of investigators who made
their bestselling debut in Right As Rain, are hired to
find a fourteen-year-old girl who's run away from her home in
the suburbs. It's easy for Strange and Quinn to learn that the
girl is now working as a prostitute in one of D.C.'s most brutal
neighborhoods. Getting her to leave is harder. The two ex-cops
think they know this world—but nothing in their experience
has prepared them for the vengeance of Worldwide Wilson, the
ruthless operator whose territory they are intruding upon. Their
mission is fractured by a violent criminal act against a young
player from the neighborhood football team that Strange coaches.
Tracking down the perpetrators becomes a point of honor for
Strange and Quinn, and their investigation leads them deep inside
the city's labyrinth of crime—and back, again, to the lethal
Worldwide Wilson.
It's
My Body and I'll Cry If I Want To by
Sharleen Jonasson
Published September 2001
Beth
Middleton, lapsed feminist, is recently separated from her husband
and is the custodial parent of their frequently hostile 14-year-old
daughter. A failed investigative journalist in a financial and
career slump, she’s wary of the offer, from an unconventional
source, of an exceptional assignment: Will she infiltrate an
elite beauty clinic to uncover details of a state-of-the art
treatment soon to be unleashed on an unsuspecting market? The
anti-beauty guerrilla who briefs her claims the treatment could
expose millions of women to possibly mortal danger. Beth decides
to do her bit to help loosen the hold an increasingly unrealistic
beauty industry has over women including, potentially, her own
daughter (and also perhaps resolve the ongoing contest between
herself and her bathroom mirror). So she signs on as a client
at this institution devoted to improving appearances -- and
finds many things are not what they appear to be at all. This
book delivers
a captivating look at the pursuit of beauty in the not-too-distant
future. The plot is strikingly original and fast-paced, the
writing is smart and funny, and the author clearly has a terrific
sense of the absurd. And five months after reading the novel,
I still find myself chuckling.
