Her by Laura Zigman

A smart, deeply satisfying romantic comedy about a woman's obsession with the return of her fianc?s ex. On the Delta Shuttle between New York and Washington, Elise finds herself sitting next to Donald-tall, with dark wavy hair, a big easy smile. She's left the world of women's magazines in Manhattan for graduate school in D.C. He's left investment banking to become a teacher. They are both unattached. They exchange stories. They fall in love. One year later they're headed for an April wedding. Storybook finish? Not quite. Donald has some serious baggage: an ex-fianc? named Adrienne. And she's not just any ex: she is the mother of all exes. Yale educated, French extraction, ravishing, and she's just shown up in D.C. Adrienne is Elise's worst nightmare incarnate--and before too long her all-consuming obsession. Every man comes with baggage. But did it have to be her? Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review The problem with most of the post-Bridget Jones fiction is that the dithering heroines tend to inspire impatience rather than sympathy, but in the novel Her, Laura Zigman skillfully avoids that common pitfall. Elise is engaged to be married to Donald. Displaced New Yorkers living in Washington, D.C., they bond over the foibles of life in the capital: pundits at the grocery store, power brokers at the baggage claim. Donald seems a truly amiable fellow, a fine fictional creation worth fighting over. Enter the titular her, Donald's ex-girlfriend Adrienne, a dark beauty who's catty and gracefully catlike all at once. When Adrienne relocates from New York to D.C., Elise fights a pitched battle over the hapless Donald, who of course has no idea of the warfare on his behalf. Unfortunately, Elise can be so insecure and jealous that the reader guiltily begins to root for Adrienne--at least she's got a little self-respect. Such is the power of romantic formula, however, that when it all comes right for Donald and Elise, we close the book with a satisfied feeling. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Laura Zigman is the author of Animal Husbandry and Dating Big Bird. She spent ten years working in book publishing in New York. Her pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today. She now lives outside Boston. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Back Cover It's fun; it's smart; it's sassy, and it's about a subject most women have no problem relating to: the other woman. We love it...Zigman's dialogue is witty and right on...[Her] will win you over, give you something to smile about (in the end) and give the little green monster in all of us a chance to get out of his cage, if only for a short while. -Michelle Rupe Eubanks, TimesDaily (Alabama) Her is a bitter gem...taut and gripping, true and painful. -City Paper (PA) This is one rampaging hoot of a book, likely to strike a resounding chord with anyone who has ever felt a reluctant and horrid fascination with the 'ex' of [his/her] significant other. It's witty, snappy, a bit disquieting and always hugely entertaining, even when the heroine for whom you are rooting runs totally amok....The fun here is in the details....A romp of a tale. -The Seattle Times /Post Intelligencer Zigman is a smart writer, part Dorothy Parker, part Gilda Radner. [She] has perfect pitch in getting the comic details of urban women's lives and relationships, as well as the emotional mix of exuberance and loneliness, self-doubt and self-confidence, dreaming dreams and not giving up on them. -Sandee Brawarsky, The Jewish Week [A] delightfully frothy novel...Zigman's strength is creating lovably frazzled and charmingly insecure heroines...It's a fun ride... -Chicago Tribune In Zigman's zany romantic comedy Her, ex marks the spot . . . Her is as scary as it is funny. . . . A howl. -USA Today A captivating tale of jealousies and misconceptions. -Booklist Lively and funny. . . . Her is as addicting as Zigman's previous work. . . Sharp, hilarious. -Bookpage --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Zigman's third novel, a wild tale of a woman's transformation... from bride-to-be to madwoman is for anyone who's ever felt prewedding jitters and the pangs of obsessive jealousy. Having left her job at a teen magazine in New York City to pursue a quieter life in Washington, D.C., Zigman's narrator, Elise, meets her perfect guy Donald, a reformed bond trader now teaching English at Sidwell Friends on the Delta shuttle. Or her almost perfect guy. Donald's one fault is that he was engaged to Adrienne, and her name crops up in just about every conversation. Though Donald and Elise swiftly fall in love and begin planning their wedding, Elise cannot help obsessing over the brilliant and horrifyingly gorgeous former fianc,e. But like the paranoiac who is being followed, Elise may have good reason to be jealous. Only months before the wedding, Adrienne takes a job in Washington, D.C., and reinserts herself into Donald's life, fueling Elise's jealousy as well as a slapstick plot having to do with Donald's dog, Elise's wedding dress and liposuction. Zigman is better at caricature than characterization, and her emphatic, read-aloud style sometimes falls flat on the page. Yet some scenes when Donald meets Elise, for instance are fresh and smart and almost perfect, as are many of her one-liners. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 We were, as it happened, Donald and I, deciding that evening on how we would have our wedding invitations printed--Engraving? Thermography? Lithography?--when Adrienne, Donald's ex-fianc?, called to share her good news: she was leaving New York to accept a job in Washington, where we lived, just after the first of the year. It was late November. We were planning an April wedding. And until that instant when the phone rang and Donald ran to the Caller ID box by the desk and froze, I had been planning-perhaps naively, perhaps idiotically-on taking the high road when it came to Adrienne and her relentless pursuit of friendship with Donald. I had vowed, without any true understanding of just how deep-rooted and, well, virulent, my particular strain of jealousy was, I see now, to put an end to my obsession. My suspicion. My frenzied insecurity. I had vowed, as they say, at long last, to get a grip. On my demons. On my nemesis. On her. Clearly this was wishful thinking on my part; a momentary lapse of delusional optimism (quite common, I'd read, with most brides-to-be), for nothing of the sort-maturity, acceptance, suffering in silence-was in the cards. Especially now that she-Adrienne-would be living, as it were, in our backyard. We had been staring intently at three pieces of Crane's Ecruwhite Kid Finish stationery stock that I'd managed to sneak out of Neiman Marcus's sample book as souvenirs-the salesman, stout, balding, moist, had excused himself to take a phone call from an important customer: And will this be a surprise celebration for the Chief Justice? (This was, after all, Washington.) The three sample invitations were identical except for the method of printing (which is why I had lifted them: to better understand the hefty price differential) and the surely fictional inviters and betrotheds (Mr. and Mrs. Henry Stewart Evans request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Katherine Leigh to Mr. Brian Charles Jamison. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Fields, III, request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Tiffany Jane to Mr. Phinneas Welch. . . . Our joy will be more complete if you will share in the marriage of our daughter Blah blah blah to Mr. Blah blah blah.). Running our fingers slowly and carefully over the print on each card; holding them up to the light; sniffing them, even (my suggestion), yielded nothing. We were failures in the study and appreciation of fine printing techniques. Okay, I give up, Donald said, throwing the invitation he was holding down onto the table and leaning back in his chair until its joints creaked ominously. Which is which? Beats me. Neiman's had, I explained, not been kind enough to reward my little theft by providing me the answers on the back of each like a set of helpful flash cards. Donald brought his chair abruptly forward, sat upright, and yawned passionately. He stretched his arms across the table, pushing the sample invitations aside as he did, and reached for my hands. Honey? he said languidly. What? I said flatly. May I speak frankly? Must you? Had he ever spoken any other way? Couldn't we, just once, I wondered, get through some task (eating dinner, washing dishes, having sex) without his need to speak frankly? Fine. Speak, I said, waving my hand, giving up. Relieved now to have license to speak his mind (a technicality: he spoke his mind quite freely without my permission, as you'll see), he smiled broadly, then brought his shoulders up in a fake cringe, as if to indicate that he felt just terrible about what he was going to say-even though, I knew, he didn't. I'm bored, he said, finally, his confession a guilty pleasure (he was a true Catholic, through and through). I have to be honest, I'm having a hard time caring-broad smile, shoulders up, fake cringe-about how the invitations get printed. I mean, why are we doing this? I couldn't have been more bored myself, but I wouldn't have admitted it for the world. Instead, I let my mouth sag slightly into a sad pout. Doing what? I asked. Getting married or discussing the invitations? The phone rang. Discussing the invitations, of course, he said. He reached to give my hands a reassuring little squeeze but I withheld them for effect. I want to get married. The phone rang again. Because. I was about to explain how costly engraving was compared to the other options and how since we couldn't tell the difference anyway, we could, with a completely clear conscience, opt for the cheapest method of the three-lithography-but I was too distracted by the third ring of the telephone. On the beginning of the fourth ring he rose from the dining room table where we'd been sitting, took three steps over to the desk, leaned across it, turned back to look at me, and cringed-this time for real. It's Adrienne. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist Zigman, a former publicist who used to work for Knopf, is now publishing her third novel with her former employer. Elise has left the magazine business and New York behind to go to grad school in Washington, D.C. She meets Donald on a shuttle plane, and the two hit it off, despite Elise's annoyance at the fact that Donald mentions his ex-fiancee, Adrienne. A year later, Elise and Donald are engaged, but Elise is still jealous of Adrienne. When Adrienne announces that she's moving to D.C., Elise is sure she's planning to steal Donald away. Adrienne arrives, and she's everything Elise feared: gorgeous, magnetic, and flirtatious. Despite her insecurities, Elise decides to put aside her doubts and befriend Adrienne. Is Adrienne really trying to steal Donald, or is it all in Elise's head? Elise is neurotic but sympathetic, and Zigman expertly pulls the reader into the story through Elise's eyes. Readers who liked Zigman's previous novels, Animal Husbandry (1998) and Dating Big Bird (2000), will enjoy this captivating tale of jealousies and misconceptions. See Works in Progress [BKL Mr 15 02] for more about Zigman's transition from publicist to author. Kristine Huntley Copyright ? American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal This slim profile-cum-cautionary tale of an obsessed, driven woman brings Fran‡oise Sagan's Bonjour, Tristesse to mind, though it's less downbeat. Popular author Zigman (e.g., Animal Husbandry) tells the story of Elise, whose relationship with fianc, Donald is put to the test when his aggressive, drop-dead-gorgeous ex-fianc,e, Adrienne, decides to relocate to Washington, DC, and looks him up. Immature Donald's not much of a prize he's obsessive to the point of absurdity on the subject of his weight and prone to dropping his trousers when upset. The question for readers, then, is whether they want to read a story, however well written, about annoying, even mean-spirited people. Zigman dissects paranoia and single-Jewish-woman angst perfectly and no doubt will connect with a number of readers, but the tale's attempts at humor are forced and the ending contrived. The moral of this story is that smart women are often dim, and perhaps that's just not quite enough. Recommended for public libraries where there's a demand for women's fiction. Jo Manning, Barry Univ., Miami Shores, FL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From AudioFile Zigman's novel features a cast of neurotic characters. Narrator Elise is paranoid about the presence of her fianc?s ex-fianc?, and fianc?Donald seems afraid to let his ex, Adrienne, go. Even super-beautiful Adrienne is insecure and clingy, and the waves of self-involved tension even radiate out to include Elise's friends. Ilana Levine gives a solid performance, clear and appropriately ironic, but it cannot detract from the fact that the 6-hour audiobook is about 3 hours too long. Elise's fearful rants become redundant and tiresome after the first chapter, and there seems to be no motivation for her grating behavior. What should be humorous scenes of pseudo-obsession--Elise's drive-bys past the competition's house, late night forays into Donald's desk drawers--just seem pathetic after the third time she does them. And she's only getting started. L.B.F. ? AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright ? AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Inside Flap A smart, deeply satisfying romantic comedy about a woman's obsession with the return of her fianc?s ex. On the Delta Shuttle between New York and Washington, Elise finds herself sitting next to Donald?tall, with dark wavy hair, a big easy smile. She?s left the world of women's magazines in Manhattan for graduate school in D.C. He?s left investment banking to become a teacher. They are both unattached. They exchange stories. They fall in love. One year later they?re headed for an April wedding. Storybook finish? Not quite. Donald has some serious baggage: an ex-fianc? named Adrienne. And she's not just any ex: she is the mother of all exes. Yale educated, French extraction, ravishing, and she's just shown up in D.C. Adrienne is Elise's worst nightmare incarnate--and before too long her all-consuming obsession. Every man comes with baggage. But did it have to be her? --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review It's fun; it's smart; it's sassy, and it's about a subject most women have no problem relating to: the other woman. We love it...Zigman's dialogue is witty and right on...[Her] will win you over, give you something to smile about (in the end) and give the little green monster in all of us a chance to get out of his cage, if only for a short while. -Michelle Rupe Eubanks, TimesDaily (Alabama) Her is a bitter gem...taut and gripping, true and painful. -City Paper (PA) This is one rampaging hoot of a book, likely to strike a resounding chord with anyone who has ever felt a reluctant and horrid fascination with the 'ex' of [his/her] significant other. It's witty, snappy, a bit disquieting and always hugely entertaining, even when the heroine for whom you are rooting runs totally amok....The fun here is in the details....A romp of a tale. -The Seattle Times /Post Intelligencer Zigman is a smart writer, part Dorothy Parker, part Gilda Radner. [She] has perfect pitch in getting the comic details of urban women's lives and relationships, as well as the emotional mix of exuberance and loneliness, self-doubt and self-confidence, dreaming dreams and not giving up on them. -Sandee Brawarsky, The Jewish Week [A] delightfully frothy novel...Zigman's strength is creating lovably frazzled and charmingly insecure heroines...It's a fun ride... -Chicago Tribune In Zigman's zany romantic comedy Her, ex marks the spot . . . Her is as scary as it is funny. . . . A howl. -USA Today A captivating tale of jealousies and misconceptions. -Booklist Lively and funny. . . . Her is as addicting as Zigman's previous work. . . Sharp, hilarious. -Bookpage --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.