I read about 5 pages and thought, for no discernible reason, "Nope, I'm not going to like this book." But I kept reading because it was only 5 pages and this is a weird moment in life to suddenly become decisive. I quickly got hooked, like 'stay up late to read just one more line hooked'. And in the middle of a funeral I realized this book is really funny. And it's really smart. Bare prose is so hard and when it is done with skill it's amazing. I have sympathy with the journey towards self knowledge, and enjoyed the nods to so many other works without falling into their restrictions.

PSA to another reviewer and reminder to myself when I don't like a book: it is ok to dislike a popular, much-hyped book. It is also totally ok to like it. Maybe don't accuse everyone who liked it of lying because they're too stupid to not like it or too weak to admit so in public. Consider that they might just have different taste than you. That behavior does not, in fact, make you better than them; it just makes you an asshole. ( )

Everything about this book is magical to me. There is such a buoyant quality to this prose, and such a candor in the narrative voice. The story is flatly told but full of surprise. It explains very little and apologizes for nothing. The protagonist is without agency, yielding, being acted on continuously by others rather than making her own conscious decisions. I ended up feeling completely enveloped in this character--as I read, I was her. She is someone who is obsessively observant of other people, and of her environment. She can record her actions and her emotions meticulously but she is never in charge of them--they happen to her. I think that writing such a yielding character must be very difficult but here it feels effortless. The prose is so bare and simple that it's easy not to realize how masterfully composed it is. ( )

I sped through this in a day. The narrator is not much like me and makes a lot of poor choices but I still felt like the author was dealing with some universal feelings and issues at the same time. I'm not sure that everything made sense in this story but it was an easy escape for a day. ( )

Leah is living in a lackluster Queens apartment with her self-involved husband when she receives word that her friend and former boss has died. Going back to San Francisco, she encounters friends and co-workers from her past as well as meeting a few new people. She also inherits the car her boss died in, a speedy vehicle that frightens Leah, along with her boss's voice in her head.

What is lost in the summary is how very What a strange and perfect book this is. Marcy Dermansky manages to pack so much depth into this slim novel, and I was so sorry when I turned the final page and was finished with it. Leah's voice is so immediate that there was no way to avoid experiencing the book though her eyes, and over the course of the novel, I began to understand her reactions to events (which was very different than what my own reactions would have been). ( )

The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky


The Red Car is an existential mystery, one that hinges on humor, voice, and the way these two narrative qualities can work together to create real suspense. The car itself is the book’s symbolic centerpiece, part of an inheritance a New York writer (thirtysomething Leah) must travel to San Francisco to claim. The inheritance comes from Leah’s former boss, a sort of big sister/mother figure from whom Leah had become estranged.

The story’s real center is Leah herself. In addition to her inheritance and the funeral for her friend Judy, Leah has just finished a draft of her first novel, and been assaulted (choked) by her husband, fellow writer and self-absorbed semi-lunatic Hans. It’s obvious early on that Leah’s life is set to change drastically, if not completely implode.

Benevolently haunted by the voice of Judy, a friend willing to give her advice on everything from the spiritual to the mundane, Leah sets off on a Californian fortnight of drinking, light drug use, reunions with old friends, and random hook-ups. All the while, Leah makes you care about her as she blends her trip into the adult world with deeper, lingering needs of her childhood and young adulthood, goals as simple as wanting people to like her.

Told in a quirky, matter-of-fact voice, there is, nonetheless, an ironic thread of magical realism woven into this story, from the random way the plot comes together to the book’s key conflict, the way Leah makes peace with her own needs and the fate of her marriage. These magical elements aren’t significant enough to leave you doubting Leah as a narrator, but they do open the text up to additional interpretations, from the feminist to the psychoanalytical.

Bottom line: this is a book you’ll breeze through and be happy you did, except perhaps in seeing Leah go. She’s a character who, despite her extreme anxiety and the resulting raft of suspect life choices, you can’t help but like.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/kbaumeister/2016/10/the-nervous-breakdowns-re... ( )