Lorrie Moore

Benna Carpenter is an art history professor who wears glass jewelry, sings in local nightclubs, chain-smokes, runs an aerobics class for the elderly, teaches poetry, and has an adorable and devoted six-year-old daughter. Yet Benna is disillusioned, cynical and bitter. With brilliant imagination and wit, this extraordinary novel explores Benna's world of misheard exit lines, love gained and lost truths almost told, and fragile and desperate hope.

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maggie

this is like if "when harry met sally" was x-rated and rly fucking depressing

You know the simultaneous feeling of sad and happy that an airport gives you? That's this book in a nutshell. It reflects the weary while making you laugh harder than you expect to. It's ideal for lovers of language and puns, for those who prefer to deal with words and invent entire worlds in their head than deal with the inevitably disappointing reality of everyday life.

Tara King

I don't...I don't even know what to say about this one. I didn't finish it, and when the library took it back, that seemed just fine. I didn't hate it, but found it fairly uncompelling.  As far as I can tell, each chapter seems to be a slightly different version of the story, characters in and out of relationships--each section an anagram of the previous one. 

Intellectually, I feel like YES! Let's do THAT! Let's just change the story mid-stream and never blink, it reflects reality and the weakness of human memory! And it does. It's exactly like the time I told Paul it was okay to throw a magazine away and then got mad that he threw it away the next week. I meant both of them! I don't remember saying them both! Life and memory are confusing! 

The book has some really funny lines, too: 

"I realized that life was too short for anyone honestly and thoroughly to outgrow anything, but it was clear that some people were making more of an effort than others." 

More often than not, the book felt clever more than funny, though. (Sorry, Benna.) I found myself more annoyed than interested (some part of me thinks it's the same way I feel about someone who is too like me.)  

But who knows? Maybe in ten years time, I'll give it another try and love it.

Alyssa Mastrocco

"An extraordinary, often hilarious novel." --The New York Times A revelatory tale of love gained and lost, from a master of contemporary American fiction. Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry and sings at nightclubs. As their relationships ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a captivating, innovative portrait of men and women in love and not in love.

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