The Mistress's Revenge

Cohen's debut reads as if Paddy Chayefsky had written Fatal Attraction. The book unfolds in the epistolary form via Sally Islip's journal addressed to Clive Gooding, a man who jilted her after a long affair. A bracing dose of black humor comes from imagining Clive's growing horror at learning that his ex-lover has befriended his wife and grown children. And the way that Sally describes Clive adds salt to the deepening wounds: at various points she mentions his overweight appearance, his impotence during their first tryst, his overinflated ego, his "sludge-colored eyes." And after Sally anonymously publishes a thinly veiled autobiographical account of their affair, Clive's paranoia reaches a breaking point. As Sally emotionally unravels, someone (could it be Clive?) hacks into her e-mail account and sends rude notes to her employers, destroying her livelihood. This should be cause for concern, but her investment in revenge overshadows all. There's a limit to how much punishment the author can pile onto her characters before the reader tunes out, and Cohen pushes past it, stripping the humor from the dark. (June)