THE ANXIETY OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS

A secretary—but not the world’s best. Not even close.

Winona Bartlett (Win, to her friends) thinks of her thankless job at the law firm of Grecko Mauster Crill as a form of meditation, when she thinks about it at all, but she doesn’t mind fetching coffee or filing. Her real life is about to start any minute, complete with an interesting man and awards for the avant-garde films she makes in her head. Then Sandy Spires, a breathtakingly beautiful, blind lawyer shows up more or less out of nowhere to assist Bill Mauster with a prickly case involving Lisa Box, a bankrupt life-makeover chain. Sandy’s handicap hasn’t stopped her—in fact, she’s a steamroller. Win snaps out of her whimsical daydreaming, fascinated by Sandy’s fabulous clothes and reptilian calm. Oops, looks like the receptionist, Lucy Cummings, a frazzled single mom, is going to have to start showing up on time. And Nancy Hobbs, the eccentric office manager, is going to get demoted, thanks to Sandy’s maneuvering. Nancy’s responsibilities will now be Win’s—not that Win wants to work that hard. After all, she has a social life of sorts: Rex, the handsome young associate, has a crush on her, though she’s dating Sylvester, a movie producer with artistic pretensions. She’s permitted him to fondle her knee, but is he the man of her dreams? She might as well let Fruit Bat, her long-suffering feline companion, decide. Why is life so fundamentally strange anyway? Hey, it’s going to get a whole lot stranger when Win buys a video camera and secretly tapes Sandy’s clandestine meetings with the opposition in the Lisa Box case. There’s something to be said for paying attention every now and again.

Deliciously wacky debut novel from the author of Jack Kerouac is Pregnant (stories: 1994) and winner of a Pushcart Prize. Hilarious, sly, sharply observed, and one of a kind—more, please.