The Life of the Mind

A promising debut with lots of things wrong with it. Sometimes sloppily written–even ungrammatically written–this book features an immature, self-obsessed narrator who stumbles through a series of unconnected episodic adventures while recovering from a miscarriage. She has two therapists and friends with whom she has competitive and mutually un-supportive relationships, a horror show of a “mentor” who is, as the narrator says, the reason she is in therapy, and a boyfriend who is the most undeveloped character imaginable. But hidden in this mis-shapen picaresque mess is a voice that occasionally rises above the quotidian to something resembling Saul Bellow, and that kept me reading. An eight-page episode about karaoke wasn't a strong note at the end, but I'll look out for her next effort.