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.
Hana (or should that be Pittard?) relishes flouting the 'rules' of creative writing here ... With her affectations (such as playing dead) and unreliability, Hana can be a frustrating narrator, but the metafictional angle renders her more wily than precious. The dialogue and scenes sparkle, and there are delightful characters, including Hana's father, who's had five wives and starts microdosing psilocybin at age 80. Pluck any line and it's sure to be memorable ... This gleefully odd book is perfect for Miranda July and Patricia Lockwood fans.
The author’s ear for dialogue and her sense of absurdity carry the novel. While readers may find her meta-commentary about autofiction itself distracting—for example, Hana refers to her boyfriend only by the name he is given in one of her ex’s short stories—Pittard asks readers to consider the characters they are and who they love.
A wild romp of a novel that might have been more successful if the writer weren’t still out for revenge ... Pittard’s prose hums with wit and verve, paragraphs and pages ricocheting from one sharp or devastating or shocking observation to the next. Ultimately, though, the novel never quite transcends its backstory or makes meaning of its protagonist’s ennui, though Hana’s relationship with her depressed father is poignant.
