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Adult Books - Fiction - General Fiction
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Trouble.
Christensen, Kate (author).
June 2009. 320p. Doubleday, hardcover, $24.95 (9780385527309).
REVIEW.
First published March 1, 2009 (Booklist).
At the start, this feels like a stylishly sexy, midlife-upheaval novel featuring upscale New Yorkers––a spa treatment for the mind. Not so fast. This is mordant and sly Christensen, author of the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning The Great Man (2007). And, sure enough, her new novel metamorphoses into a scouring tale of psychological paradox. Josie, a 45-year-old therapist, is struck, as though with a god’s lightning bolt, by the realization that her marriage is over. At the same time, her longtime friend, rock star Raquel, is being shredded for her affair with a much younger actor, and the worst of her tormentors is a famously vicious gossip blogger. As Christensen keenly assesses the particular damage wrought by cyber slander, Raquel flees to Mexico City, and Josie joins her there, thrilled to be piloted through the metropolis’ high life on a river of tequila. As Josie reawakens to life’s pleasures, Raquel shuts down. What sort of shrink is Josie? She seems clueless about people’s feelings. Bewitching readers with a narcotic blend of eroticism and suspense, Christensen raises unsettling questions about our inability to understand ourselves or others and marvels over our consuming fascination with ritualized confrontation, whether it’s the voraciousness of the paparazzi or the ancient drama of the bullfight. — Donna Seaman
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