cover image Lucy Crocker 2.0

Lucy Crocker 2.0

Caroline Preston. Scribner Book Company, $23 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-684-85449-6

A family of computer programming nerds in Crowley, Mass., repair their marital dysfunction and domestic alienation by rediscovering the great outdoors in a blandly amusing, gently ironic tale from the author of Jackie by Josie. Former librarian Lucy Crocker is the inadvertently famous designer of the popular computer fantasy adventure Maiden Quest. Lucy is a fine artist and knows little about computers, but her game has made her husband Ed's company, Crocker Software, a big hit. Ed, a math genius with a pony tail, is having a hard time motivating his wife to bring out Maiden Quest's long-awaited sequel; exasperated by Lucy's procrastination, and bored after 15 years of marriage, Ed finds comfort in the tantric massages of his take-charge publicity director, Ingrid Bascom. Meanwhile, the Crockers' insufferably geeky 13-year-old twin sons, Benjy and Phil, have started their own computer company. When Lucy figures out how to read e-mail, she learns of her husband's dalliance and discovers that her sons are giggling at dirty pictures online. So the boys, who'd never dream of trading their hard drive for a Sunday drive in the country, get shipped off to the wilderness survival camp in Wisconsin that Lucy attended every summer as a teenager. The kids manage to tough it out, Lucy has a fling with a mountain man and the story climaxes in a predictable convergence on Little Lost Lake. There aren't many surprises here, but Preston's story bubbles along cheerfully, thanks to her evident enjoyment in her tale. This offers lighthearted fun for readers interested in the humorous clash between high-tech lifestyles and old-fashioned domesticity. BOMC and QPB alternates. (May)