Klonopin Lunch: A Memoir

Named for the wonder pill that calmed her down in the midst of a hysterical heartbreak, this thin, instant memoir reconstructs New Yorker Jones’s (The Art of Cheating) sadly destructive, ultimately self-revelatory affair with her sexy young guitar teacher. Married for four years to Andrew, a man of either saintly indulgence or monumental blindness, Jones has grown weary by age 30-something of her ho-hum home life and unchallenging, finite work in an startup New York City dot-com and accepts a friend’s challenge to take guitar lessons. Gideon, the sexy clerk from the Chelsea guitar store, arrives at her home in tight pants, a “70s dude flip,” and with a crooked smile, and Jones is a goner. What ensues is the sordid unraveling of her affair and marriage: she begins to frequent Gideon’s gigs (she’s only a little shocked at how mediocre his band is), stays out late, does drugs with him and his band, loses weight, and starts her own band, Throws like a Girl. Sliding into self-loathing and incoherence from drugs and her slavish passion, she also has to scramble for a new job once her dot-com closes. The affair knocks her out of her complacency, yet even though Gideon proves “a little more one-dimensional” than she originally thought, a coke head and womanizer to boot, she learns finally the toll of dishonesty in this very raw, human lesson about vulnerability and growth. (July)