Coll (karlmarx.com
) considers one woman's stalled life and the midlife crisis it provokes in her funny, poignant second novel. In über-suburban Rockville Pike, Md., 41-year-old Jane Kramer is stuck running Kramer's Discount Furniture Depot, raising her teenage goth son, Justin, virtually alone and obsessing over Delia, the patio furniture saleswoman who's vying for her husband Leon's attentions. Highlights, for Jane, are her daily visits to the grave sites of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, her creative shopping sprees, and her discovery of Memories Inc., a pyramid scheme that thrives on the scrapbooking obsessions of housewives. All's semiwell, at least, until Leon runs off with Delia, Justin gets suspended from school and Jane realizes that they are living way beyond their means. Pushed to the breaking point, Jane thinks of her mother, a suicide: "Another reason why I couldn't drive my van off a cliff was because there was a load of wet towels in the washer and who would ever think to stick them in the dryer?" Propelling herself out of her inertia, Jane decides to track down her misbehaving family, and soon she finds herself back in New York, where she first met Leon, mourning the life she never lived and determined to fix the life she never planned. Coll perfectly captures Jane's coming of a certain age with feisty humor and soul-searching honesty. Agent, Melanie Jackson. (Jan.)
