Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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-"The Man of My Dreams," by Curtis Sittenfeld; Random (288 pages, $22.95)
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Curtis Sittenfeld writes gimmick-free fiction. There are no teenage boys or flying broomsticks, no conspiracy theories that challenge the core of Catholicism, no former fashion bosses to exploit. Instead, Sittenfeld delivers pure, elegant prose, true, perfect dialogue and emotion so searing it might just leave a scar.
In her debut novel "Prep," Sittenfeld explored the typical coming-of-age tale through the eyes of Lee Fiora, an outsider marooned at an exclusive boarding school. In "The Man of My Dreams," she introduces Hannah Gavener, no less awkward than Lee and equally besotted with the wrong men. (Cross Sugarman, Lee's obsession in "Prep," is reincarnated here as a guy named Henry.)
The characters are hardly lovable or winsome. They're complicated but not in the look-at-me-I'm-so-quirky way that plagues chick lit. Hannah feels like a blundering fool around her therapist of seven years and agonizes over social missteps. She would rather be alone with her anxiety than interact with others. "Sometimes on Fridays Hannah takes cough medicine so she can fall asleep even earlier than usual, once as early as five-thirty in the afternoon. This is probably not the best idea, but it's only cough medicine, not real sleeping pills."
As in "Prep," which takes place over four years, little happens in terms of plot, and "The Man of My Dreams" tests our patience by stretching over an even longer period of time, starting when Hannah is 14 and ending when she is 28. Readers who felt like it took four long years to get through "Prep" - a complaint heard in this reviewer's book club - are likely to find "The Man of My Dreams" slow.
Fourteen-year-olds can be shallow, and so the book starts out shakily. Hannah fixates on Julia Roberts' planned marriage to Kiefer Sutherland. Her life is dramatic enough - Hannah, her sister Allison and their mother have been thrown out of their home by Hannah's mercurial father - but the chapter manages to be dull anyway. Luckily, Sittenfeld quickly skips ahead to Hannah's life at Tufts University, where the novel starts to read like "Prep," and the story improves quite a bit.
In one scene, on the night of her mother's second marriage, Hannah and her new stepfather drive an elderly woman home from the wedding. It's just a few pages long, but Sittenfeld packs in so much: an insightful examination of family dynamics, the impatience of youth and the fortitude of age.
Naturally, none of Hannah's love interests turn out to be dream-guy material. Mike, her first boyfriend, is good to her but eventually becomes boring. Oliver is a cheating cad who wins Hannah's attention with a questionable line: "Under your prim exterior, I'm sure there beats the heart of a lusty animal.' In spite of herself, Hannah felt flattered, and then he added,Perhaps a gerbil.'"
And Henry, her longtime infatuation, welcomes her affection without offering anything more than friendship in return.
The most overbearing man in Hannah's life is her father, whose thunderstorm of a personality dictates her actions: "His essential lesson, she always believed, was this: There are many ways for you to transgress, and most you will not recognize until after committing them."
So Hannah tiptoes around, uncertain and clumsy but still somehow appealing. The book ends on an unsettled note, and you can't help but feel a little cheated; "This" is what I waded through 14 years for? But what makes the ending unsatisfying - basically, the idea that life is tough but worth the hassle - is what makes the rest of the book so honest and ultimately rewarding.
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(c) 2006, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
