Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P.—the metafictional version—has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the flagship university, living with a fellow academic, and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently in her ex-husband's debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news, but the morning after baking mac 'n' cheese from scratch for her nephew's sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she's long been enjoying is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous mid-life crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean's office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek-like chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana's auto-fictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.
A rollicking, free-associative and almost claustrophobically insiderish novel most honest in its naked craving for validation and a place in an increasingly unstable canon.
Pittard’s special contribution is her ability to braid strands of pathos and comedy ... Tilts another few degrees away from reality’s plumb line ... Is Pittard working through her own private catastrophes in this novel? Of course — but so is every other novelist. She’s just letting us see the splintered timbers of her experience clearly enough to recognize our own.
The story, such as it is, resolves with a tidy ending in which Hana expresses anger about the sorry state of life and upends her routine in several conventional and obvious ways. Assorted bits and pieces of the plot are wrapped up in pretty paper with pretty bows. Others are not ... It’s never quite clear why we should care about the self-absorbed Hana or her inconsequential problems.
