Title

Why Did I Ever

Creator

Mary Robison

Preview

Creation Date

10-1-2001

Description

By Mary Robison Counterpoint (Hardcover, $23.00, ISBN: 1582430608, 10/2001) In her first novel in a decade, Robison, a writer with switchblade wit, unveils the helter-skelter consciousness of Money Breton. The cynical veteran of three marriages and the mother of two screwed-up adult children, Money, still a man-magnet, is a Hollywood script doctor who commutes from a small town somewhere outside New Orleans. When she isn't pretending to work, she holds surreal conversations with the Deaf Lady, trades insults with two persistent suitors, frets over her missing cat, and takes out her fear and anger on household objects. Money's gay son, Paulie, has been tortured and raped and is currently in police custody. Mev, Money's lawyer daughter, is struggling with a methadone habit. Crazy with worry and embroiled in the maddening revision of an idiotic script about Bigfoot, Money riffs with a caustic yet deadpan humor not unlike that of Lynda Barry on men, movies, traffic, airlines, and life in general in 572 terse, numbered, and jabbing paragraphs. Robison's incandescent soliloquy on the absurdity of existence hones fiction to a new and exhilarating measure of sharpness. ―Donna Seaman. Booklist. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

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