Live a Little

Green’s third novel displays a charming, acerbic wit unfortunately employed in the service of an unlikable character. Raquel Rose finds her diagnosis with terminal stage IV breast cancer to be unfair: she put her artistic dreams on hold to raise two kids and now she’ll never become the sculptor she always wanted to be. Life after diagnosis isn’t all bad, though: knowing she has only months to live, Raquel agrees to go on Living with Lauren! her sister’s Bay Area talk show; her husband turns from couch potato to pink-ribbon activist; and her two sullen teenagers start confiding in her the way they never did before. But when a follow-up visit to the doctor reveals Raquel’s biopsy results were switched with another woman’s and she’s actually cancer-free, she can’t bring herself to fess up and lose all the local celebrity perks cancer has brought her. The lies snowball in sometimes funny fashion, but Green unfortunately doesn’t bring any gravity to Raquel’s quandary. Instead the gambit is played as ditsy and vapid. (Aug.)