With this academia-obsessed novel, New York Times
perfume critic Burr branches out from his nonfiction scent-based books. Howard Rosenbaum is a Jewish powerhouse in Hollywood with an Anglo-Saxon wife, Anne, whom he met at Columbia University, where they both earned Ph.D.s in literature. Now they live among “pathologically narcissistic” people with an “utter disdain for the written word.” But when narrator Anne is solicited to compile a book list for Dreamworks CEO Stacey Snider (Burr weaves actual Hollywood bigwigs into the tale), the list becomes a small book club, then morphs into a huge gathering with Anne the literary guru to virtually all of Hollywood. Anne and Howard’s only child, Sam, travels to Israel, and Howard’s initial delight sours when Sam is rejected by a rabbi in Jerusalem for an intensive study “program” because he is not officially Jewish and therefore “unclean.” A true celebration of intellect, Burr’s tale does, occasionally, misstep into a pedantic bog, but ultimately examines the personal decision each of us must make to run from, or embrace, our identity. (June)
