Losing Me

Fifty-eight-year-old Barbara Stirling can usually find the humor in her worries, which are considerable. She worries about her son, aged 23, who's living at home on his parents' dime, her ubergreen daughter, who's sworn off toilet paper in favor of "family cloth," and her best friend Jean, who supplements an undersexed marriage with gigolos. But Barbara mostly worries about her underprivileged students, knowing that they come from homes that are imperfect at best and, at worst, downright dangerous. The panic attacks begin when she loses her teaching position, and humor is harder to come by when her support system consists of a narcissistic mother whose advice comes in the form of criticism and a husband who is far too self-involved to pay attention to his flailing wife. Replete with Margolis's (Best Supporting Role; Coming Clean) trademarks, this novel employs irreverent, sharp-witted prose while tackling serious issues. Barbara is a funny, engaging heroine whose challenges have the reader rooting for her, even when her collapsing life somehow lands in too-good-to-be-true order.