A funny thing happened to me on Goodreads: I made two new friends in two weeks who both recommended the same book to me. It was a book I had never heard of, a debut novel, and being naturally suspicious I became convinced it was part of a very well designed viral campaign designed to capture the 4.7 of you who regularly read this thing.
I am a fool. And I'm pretty sure there was no underhanded ploy at work to pick up Shawn Klomparens' JESSICA Z (albeit at the library). But I liked the book and so far as I can tell it is not getting much attention. It's a sort of mystery with modern geopolitical consequences, and a love story, and manages those boundaries in a pretty interesting way.
Jessica Z. is a San Franciscan copywriter occasionally sleeping with her upstairs neighbor and more or less satisfied with her life. She meets and falls into an intense relationship with an artist who, intentionally or not, always seems a little aloof to her. Then at the height of their affair, she loses him -- in a way that leads her to question their entire relationship.
One reason JESSICA Z. stuck with me was because of the way it handled and manipulated these multiple genres. There's a hint of a quarterlife crisis and a work conflict dominating the book, and then something happens in the first 30 pages that jars you out of what seems like a comfortable world. So that either makes that one of the most plot-dense pieces of serious fiction I've read in a while or one of the most earnest and realistic pieces of chick lit. Not all of this is sustained -- a subplot about a blogger, which naturally I loved, gets dropped, and there are some family issues that stay behind. But if you like looking and thinking about different genres and transitioning among same, this book will be right up your alley. And no one told me to say that. Promise.
14 hours ago
