There’s no shortage of recent nonfiction works lamenting that our obsession with digital devices could turn our world into one where most human connection is a distant memory. For all the science proferred to support that thesis, leave it to a work of fiction—Courtney Maum’s razor-sharp Touch—to bring this vexing issue into focus with compassion and wit.

Sloane Jacobsen is a brilliant trend forecaster who’s been hired by consumer electronics company Mammoth (think Apple meets Amazon) to help develop a line of products aimed at childless couples. Instead of stimulating Sloane’s predictive gift, that assignment brings to light the state of her rapidly cooling domestic relationship with Roman Bellard, a self-styled public intellectual who’s taken to wearing a bizarre full-body outfit that makes Sloane think of him as a “Lycra-suited zombie.” It doesn’t help that Sloane’s vision of a world in which “touch could come back to people’s lives” clashes with Roman’s enthusiasm for a virtual “post-sexual world,” a pronouncement that goes viral with the publication of a New York Times op-ed.

Maum deftly manipulates this tantalizing setup to raise provocative questions about why so many of us seem to be happier tapping and swiping than we are in encounters with real human beings and what it might take to change that behavior. It’s premature to predict whether our world will evolve toward more intimate interactions or greater absorption with our ever more sophisticated smart phones and tablets. Whatever may happen, Touch provides an entertaining frame for what will continue to be a lively debate.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What is it about books set at elite schools? The grosgrain ribbon belt-bedecked cover of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. The anxiety-filled Princeton offices in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s Admission. The bittersweet final days of college in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. These stories somehow manage to intrigue even those of us who’ve never set foot in a prep school, let alone an Ivy League college.

It’s no surprise, of course, that Amy Poeppel—author of the deliciously smart Small Admissions—went to Wellesley College and worked in admissions for what her book jacket calls “a prestigious independent school.” Her razor-sharp observations of families desperate to place their darlings in the best Manhattan schools can only come from someone who’s lived in that world.

Kate Pearson was on track to become an academic, applying to grad schools in her chosen field of anthropology. She had a gorgeous if caddish boyfriend, Robert, who was “so ridiculously French, which was somehow an asset and a defect at the same time,” Poeppel writes. 

When Robert ditches her as soon as she lands in Paris to live with him, Kate abandons her carefully planned life and takes up residence on her New York couch. Her friend Chloe, who is Robert’s cousin and introduced the pair, feels guilty. Her sister worries for Kate’s mental health and connects her with the admissions director at Hudson Day School, who is desperate to fill an admissions counselor position before the rush. Despite a catastrophically bad interview, Kate gets the job. Slowly, slowly, she reclaims her life, her friendships and her way.

Poeppel nails the naked ambition of New York power moms for whom placing their children in a prep school is as important as securing the newest Birkin bag. Small Admissions is a laugh-out-loud funny look at status and rejection in all its forms, from the classroom to the bedroom.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, November 2016

In the United States, good journalists are muckrakers, rabble-rousers, sometimes even troublemakers—their job is to rock the boat. In this sense, newly naturalized U.S. citizen Feng Danlin, the hero of Ha Jin’s page-turning but profound new novel, The Boat Rocker, is a true American. A columnist for a Chinese-language newspaper operated out of New York City, Danlin knows that some of his columns make it into China despite the country’s outside-media freeze, and he takes that responsibility seriously.

When we meet him, Danlin is chasing a new obsession: a story about his ex-wife, Yan Haili, who left him for another man and went on to write a romance novel starring idealized versions of herself and her new husband. Adding insult to personal injury, the Chinese government has positioned itself firmly behind Haili’s book, hailing it as an example of improving relations between the U.S. and China. When Danlin discovers that reports of American excitement over the book (including a huge movie deal and English-language translation) are lies, he makes exposing them his focus.

Danlin is self-righteous about his hatred of the book, and he’s tireless in attacking both it and his ex-wife. Initially, his pursuit of such a seemingly silly story in which he has an obvious personal stake makes the reader question his credibility and judgment. We find ourselves wishing Danlin would drop his personal vendetta. But eventually we start to see the point: When a government begins to manipulate art, even romance novels, it signals a determination to root out individuality and liberty wherever it grows.

Haili’s betrayal of Danlin echoes the bigger betrayal of Danlin by China itself, a home that has been closed off to him. His divorce lets him finally access the pain of being rejected by a country that attacks his sense of justice, his right to question authority and even his right to seek truth and fulfillment in his own life and work. The twists and turns of Danlin’s fight with Haili make The Boat Rocker a compelling read, but Jin’s insight into nationalism, patriotism and the true cost of freedom of the press gives the novel depth and brilliance.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The latest book from Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, Razor Girl, has a plot that gets pretty crazy, out-of-control and hilariously cockamamie. Then again, it’s set in Florida. For all we know, the inspiration could have come off the Herald’s front page. 

When talent agent Lane Coolman’s rented car gets rear-ended 27 miles out of Key West, it’s not so much an accident as an on-purpose. The causative agent is a stunning young redhead who claims to have been distracted while performing some personal grooming that should not be undertaken with a straight razor in a car at all, let alone while driving. As a consequence, Coolman never makes it to the onstage performance of his client, faux-redneck reality star Buck Nance (né Matthew Romberg), and as a consequence, said gig goes sideways in extravagant fashion. 

Nance narrowly manages to escape the mayhem he caused at The Parched Pirate, but then he drops off the grid entirely, setting his agency’s honchos alight with what passes for concern in Hollywood. And when they realize that perhaps Buck’s disappearance might be good for his show, “Bayou Brethren,” they set in motion a chain of events that leads to kidnapping, manslaughter, redemption and an ever-evolving set of deal memos.

This, of course, is only one through-line in the novel, whose disparate strands end up woven tighter than a macramé lanyard by story’s end. Along the way we meet a detective who’s been busted down to vermin inspector; a Mafia don nicknamed Big Noogie; a grifter who schemes to import sand from Cuba; a class-action shyster; a Syrian immigrant whose vacation cruise takes a deadly turn; a cross-section of the “Nance” clan, who fuse Honey Boo-Boo’s low-rent splendor with the Kardashians’ relentless drive for self-promotion . . . and of course, the Razor Girl herself.

Only a skilled verbal stunt pilot like Hiaasen could bring this flight of fancy in for a safe landing, but there’s definitely some turbulence along the way, so you’ll want to keep those seat belts fastened.

RELATED CONTENT: Read an interview with Carl Hiaasen about Razor Girl.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, some triumphalists in the West expected something unlikely. They expected Russia to play nice. It hasn’t turned out that way, and they blame Vladimir Putin. But imagine Russia’s surly and enigmatic leader once he has fallen from power. Imagine him with his faculties less than intact. This is the premise of The Senility of Vladimir P., the ingenious second novel from former surgeon Michael Honig. 

The five-term president, two-term prime minister and de facto czar suffers from hallucinations. An imagined Chechen torments him, so he treats the mirage to his well-known judo skills. In more lucid moments, he raves about his own cunning and watches TV footage of his exploits. Putin’s long-suffering, long-term nurse, Sheremetev, considers himself the last incorruptible Russian. Then his nephew Pasha goes to jail, and Sheremetev takes to pawning Putin’s vast collection of luxury watches to set Pasha free. 

Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Honig’s novel is the farce to Russia’s genuine tragedy. The dacha where Putin convalesces comes to symbolize post-Soviet Russia as a whole, and the novel betrays a serious anguish at what has befallen the country. It delights in showing its architect as a destructive megalomaniac. Today, Putin likes to appear shirtless to show his virility. Honig suggests instead that the emperor wears no clothes.

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mark Leyner’s electrifying and theatrical fourth novel, Gone with the Mind, opens in the food court of a shopping mall during a book signing. While the title recalls Margaret Mitchell, that is only the first of many literary touchstones for this imaginative autobiographical novel, initially narrated by Mark’s mother to an audience of two proles on work break. As her monologue proceeds for pages without a paragraph break, one is reminded of the final chapter of Ulysses, in which Molly Bloom’s river of consciousness makes her seem more formidable with each breathless word. Mark then takes the stage, and in his casual concatenation of pop-culture references with science, philosophy and OED vocabulary, the reader enters the rarefied and rich territory charted by David Foster Wallace.

You never know what Mark is going on about, but you can’t stop listening. It’s like Saul Bellow without the plot, a three-hour-long therapy session in which you are the therapist and Mark is the patient. Or a more frenetic Notes from Underground, with prostate cancer replacing Dostoevsky’s liver disease.

To wit: Mark is a 58-year-old struggling Jewish writer recovering from prostate surgery. He is unusually close to his mother and lacks two shekels to rub together. Mark careens from rage to despond and back again, while the two service workers in his so-called audience remain glued to their smartphones. Mark is often hilarious, but usually in a manner calculated to shock. Life, he says, is “pretty much like Carrie’s prom,” referring to the vengeful Stephen King character.

Leyner launched his writing career in the 1990s, alongside Jonathan Franzen and Wallace, and has worked as a screenwriter. His novels, which are cult literary classics, have titles like My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. James Wood called this “hysterical realism,” a genre aspiring to approach in fiction the mania of contemporary life, to leave nothing out. Gone with the Mind could have been written only by someone coping with the overstimulation of today’s cyberspace. Leyner suggests that any other kind of fiction is lacking, and he may, to our detriment, be right.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A literary conference might not seem like an obvious setting for mayhem and nonsense, but that’s just what’s on the agenda in Chris Belden’s enjoyable Shriver, in which a lonely man gets invited to a university conference thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Shriver—the wrong Shriver—RSVPs, thinking it a good practical joke, until he’s swept up in the sordid, confusing world of egomaniacal writers and those who adore them. 

The gathering’s broad theme of “reality-slash-illusion” is one that the novel does great work of confusing—it pretty much blurs the slash right out. Who is Shriver? The writer of a controversial novel—or the man mistaken for that man? What makes a writer, anyway? Literary culture’s penchant for superlatives and hero-worship is enjoyably skewered: The real Shriver is revered for a 20-year-old book most people haven’t even finished. 

Shriver is a semi-likable character with more than a couple neuroses, which makes him plausible to the conference-goers as the reclusive author of the same name. He considers himself the furthest thing from a writer; he’s a man of simple pursuits who loves his cat, Mr. Bojangles, and enjoys a one-sided correspondence with a local news anchor. But everyone seems willing to be convinced, especially Professor Simone Cleverly, the university’s conference coordinator, who ironically hates writers; Edsel Nixon, Shriver’s always-there-when-you-need-him handler; and the cowboy academician T. Wätzczesnam (pronounced “whatsisname”) who quotes poetry in every conversation. 

The wacky cast of characters, inane situations and a whodunit subplot brings to mind the 1980s cult classic movie Clue. At every turn in the satirical story, someone who could unmask our protagonist lurks. Meanwhile, Shriver juggles the investigation of a missing poet last seen in his hotel room, a bewildering plague of mosquitoes and a shadowy figure in black. Shriver’s fear of being outed as an impostor rings true for any writer—wannabe or bona fide—who’s ever doubted their abilities.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Canadian author Leah McLaren walks a fine line in A Better Man, and following along as she navigates it is part of what makes her novel worth reading. A Better Man is a deft blend of comedy, wisdom and character, and it’s one of the most entertaining books of its kind you’re likely to find.

Nick Wakefield, a successful man with a big house, a pretty wife and twins, wants out. He’s tired of the grind of married life, but his best friend—a divorce lawyer—warns him that the split could cost him. To preserve his financial future, he needs to spend time playing the perfect husband and father first. As Nick tries this tactic, he finds that he’s actually growing to enjoy married life again . . . at least, until his wife, Maya, learns his secret.

Though the overall premise would be right at home in a screwball comedy, A Better Man has an incisiveness that goes straight to the dark core of a troubled marriage. Key to this is McLaren’s mastery of character. We see it in Nick’s careful yet cavalier approach to flirtations with other women and in Maya’s pragmatic evaluation of her body. 

A Better Man is a gripping, intimate book that will thrill with its juicy plot and win you over with its powerful insight into relationships.

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Power comes from being in the limelight. That’s the lesson Miranda Ford takes away from her second-runner-up win at the 18th annual Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant. As the winner and first-runner-up involuntarily step aside, Miranda becomes queen—a position she’s determined never to lose.

Two decades, a husband and three children later, Miranda Ford Miller wants her 9-year-old daughter, Bailey, to take center stage. Nothing will get in Miranda’s way—not Bailey’s growing disinterest in pageants, husband Ray’s hectic schedule with two full-time jobs or the expenses the family’s 14 credit cards can barely accommodate.

Or will it? In the rip-roaring Pretty Ugly, Emmy-nominated writer and producer Kirker Butler writes of the Southern child-pageant circuit with all the acerbic, snarky wit he’s brought to shows such as “Family Guy.”

Butler turns a gimlet eye to each family member’s motivation and conflict. Miranda pours everything into Bailey’s career, including purchasing a gym membership complete with private pole-dancing lessons. However, Bailey is ready to retire from the pageant circuit, and so she sabotages her mom’s efforts by binge-eating. Ray’s nursing and hospice jobs allow him easy access to all the pills he can pop, as well as a young mistress. Miranda’s mom, seventh-grade-educated Joan, homeschools the boys to save them from the horrors of public education. Miranda, meanwhile, is sure that the daughter she now carries will be the answer to everything.

Butler’s debut novel is a smart, sarcastic portrayal of a dysfunctional American family—one that’s sure to have readers eager for more.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.