The Lie

Wagman’s latest novel is a disappointing and angry look at the emotional devastation a young woman brings to her marriage. In breathless prose dominated by ellipses and em-dashes, Wagman portrays the halting narrative of Ramona Smollens, a lonely, repressed, Rita Hayworth–worshipping 17-year-old Philadelphia girl circa the 1950s who meets a young man in the park one week after the death of her father and marries him shortly after. Ramona’s ongoing obsession with Rita Hayworth somewhat masks (and later exacerbates) the sadness in her life, the unsurprising details of which are slowly teased out. Drifting utterly unprepared into her new marriage, Ramona quickly recognizes that her husband leaves her unfulfilled, and her faking of sexual pleasure brings on “incomprehensible feelings of desolation” that are compounded by her assumption that Solomon is being unfaithful to her. The execution’s a bit sloppy, and the experience fairly one-note. (Apr.)