Bad Sex

A hurricane is brewing on the Mexican coastline and the narrator, Brett, catches the last flight to Cancun in order to check in on a hotel property that she owns with her husband, Paul. Meanwhile, he stays behind in Mexico City to tend to their children and his father, visiting from the States. Checking her email, Brett, an acclaimed author two years sober, finds a message from Eduard, Paul’s banker, who is also stuck in Cancun. They arrange to meet at a bar, along with Brett’s high school friend Sadie, now a sex-crazed psychiatrist, who has driven down from Texas to see her. When Eduard arrives wearing “weird black leather gloves,” Sadie remarks, “That’s not a banker. That’s a fuckmaster prince.” So begins a descent from passion to carelessness and down the well to abject addiction in this deliciously profane second novel from Martin (How to Sell). Brett borrows her name from Hemingway’s Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises, hinting at the modern styling Martin employs (to great effect) to carry us through this literary bender. Brett is beautiful, smart, and trying to outrun her own destructive patterns, “because everybody knows: I drink, I hurt myself and the people around me, and then I write.” A great book of bad behavior. (Sept.)