Best known for Sleeping Arrangements, her memoir of growing up in New York, novelist Cunningham (Beautiful Bodies) offers a literate and thoroughly entertaining take on the female-in-jeopardy ("FemJep") genre of film and fiction, sending up its familiar conventions while crafting a truly gripping suspense novel. Actress Juliana finds seclusion at Casi di Rosas, her Adirondack hideaway, while awaiting a hearing on her case against her abusive husband, Matt. Having made a career of playing movie victims, Juliana thinks about casting, costumes and camera work in the courtroom and dreams of a handsome leading man coming to her rescue. Fiction and reality collide when a vacuum cleaner salesman stalks her, she gets disturbing crank phone calls and the maid reveals she knows more about all this than she had previously admitted. At the same time, Juliana is haunted by memories of her horrific life with Matt, such as the Thanksgiving at which he threw a turkey at her and killed their cat. It doesn't help matters that her neighbor across the lake is a full-time writer and part-time voyeur or that her court-appointed psychologist thinks she's crazy. Observing the action as if she were viewing one of her own movies, Juliana finds it easier to explain her husband's actions than her own. Why does she forget to bring her best piece of evidence to court? Why does she dress provocatively for an important court appearance? Why is she obsessed with a series of mysterious Victorian deaths, including that of the bride who once occupied her own house? And how will she reach a happy ending if there's no hero to rescue her? Cunningham answers all these questions with energy and wit, simultaneously mocking and bringing new life to FemJep
fiction. She skillfully twists its familiar conventions to create her best novel to date. (May 6)
