LITERACY AND LONGING IN L.A.

Author: Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack ISBN: 0385340184 6/2007 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: DELTA

Some women shop. Some eat. Dora cures the blues by bingeing on books—reading one after another, from Flaubert to bodice rippers, for hours and days on end. In this wickedly funny and sexy literary debut, we meet the beguiling, beautiful Dora, whose unique voice combines a wry wit and vulnerability as she navigates the road between reality and fiction. Dora, named after Eudora Welty, is an indiscriminate book junkie whose life has fallen apart—her career, her marriage, and finally her self-esteem. All she has left is her love of literature, and the book benders she relied on as a child. Ever since her larger-than-life father wandered away and her book-loving, alcoholic mother was left with two young daughters, Dora and her sister, Virginia, have clung to each other, enduring a childhood filled with literary pilgrimages instead of summer vacations. Somewhere along the way Virginia made the leap into the real world. But Dora isn’t quite there yet. Now she’s coping with a painful separation from her husband, scraping the bottom of a dwindling inheritance, and attracted to a seductive book-seller who seems to embody all that literature has to offer—intelligent ideas, romance, and an escape from her problems. Joining Dora in her odyssey is an elderly society hair-brusher, a heartbroken young girl, a hilarious off-the-wall female teamster, and Dora’s mother, now on the wagon, trying to make amends. Along the way Dora faces some powerful choices. Between two irresistible men. Between idleness and work. And most of all between the joy of well-chosen words and the untidiness of real people and real life.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

This contemporary is not a light-hearted beach read or for anyone who hates it when intellectual people come together to discuss, well, how intellectual they are. You know the people I mean. The ones that quote poetry and know all about the poets themselves. They love all things dark and dreary, and believe they know everything due to their literary IQ's. Book snobs. Honestly, this diary-style read is less of a romance and more of a journey through one woman's life trials and how she deals with them by going on book binges.

So, after my first paragraph, why do I still find this a Four Rose read? Well, simply because it's interestingly normal. (At least where I live.) At times Dora, the heroine, is so self-absorbed, unappreciative, and whiny, I want to stop reading. However, I still like her enough that I root for her, despite herself. Mainly, my problem and my interest in Dora is that I know so many women just like her—they can't get over their childhoods and are confused about their lives, even when they have great husbands, money, Nars lip gloss, and a trust fund. Or, at least a decent job and two-out-of-three of the above mentioned things. (Okay, so I don't know a lot of women like her, but it's darned close!) Anyway, Dora does some great soul searching, terrific giving of herself, and eventually comes around to the conclusion that most of us around her age and position do.

What? Did you think I was going to give away the secret to that? Nope. You have to read LITERACY AND LONGING IN L.A. for yourself!

Shannon Johnson