Rachel Katz would rather make people laugh than tell them unpleasant truths, so she has given up a promising career as a journalist in favor of the dicey life of a stand-up comic at the start of this warmhearted relationship farce from the author of Neurotica. Genuinely hip and decent to the bone, Jewish British single mum Rachel is an adorable heroine. From the opening scene with her hygiene-obsessed dentist fiancé, Adam, readers will be rooting for her to lose her dreary beau; prove herself to her suffocatingly anxious mother, Faye; gratify the adoring loyalty of her 10-year-old son, Sam; and win fame and fortune with her stage act. Though Rachel convinces as a stand-up talent, the jokes don't carry the tale. Little light is shed here on the anatomy of a joke, but the opposite is true of human anatomy. From Rachel's father's constipation and neighbor Shelley's labor pains to Rachel's sexual doings with delicious Matt (the visionary washing-machine repairman who provides the novel's neat title and romantic tension), every orifice has its moment in the spotlight. And if the novel is less funny and more ribald than it needs to be, never mind: there's a matey goodness here, an affection for all things human, that makes it a nourishing delight. (Oct. 16)
