Seattle - June 09, 2009

Survival of the Lit-est

"You or Someone Like You," by Chandler Burr

The only love poem you ever wrote was a surly limerick that concluded with a sour eff you.

Neruda you’re not.

But if your inclinations are literary, you’ll delight in Anne Rosenbaum, erudite heroine of You or Someone Like You.

New York Times critic Chandler Burr’s first work of fiction traverses the Manhattan media landscape and the Hollywood Hills, name-dropping the likes of Darren Aronofsky, Mel Brooks, and David Remnick in an exploration of identity, home, kinship, and love.

When Anne reluctantly agrees to lead a book club for the film industry elite, she doesn’t realize that her assignments will turn her into a minor celebrity and, as such, the subject of the adoration and scorn of fickle L.A. But when her movie executive husband leaves her to resume practicing Orthodox Judaism, the club helps her appeal to him through the words of Yeats, Tolstoy, Auden, Joyce, Trollope, and others.

A truly poetic device.

Available online at amazon.com.

For more summer reading, check out our bookshelf.