Starting from Happy

A former writer for Saturday Night Live whose work has often appeared in The New Yorker, Time, and the New York Times Magazine, Marx works best in short form. This novel, written in 618 "chaplettes" with abundant white space and the occasional line sketch thrown in, is the story of the romance between lingerie designer Imogene Gilfeather and scientist Wally Yez. Most of the text offers third-person narration, but the author inserts herself into the occasional chaplette, as in this explanation of why chaplettes 251–292 are excluded: "Patty meant 251. But Patty likes the ring of 293." We see the couple meet, begin a relationship, and detour into other relationships. Alternate endings see them break up and/or have children and grandchildren and live happily ever after until death does them part. The "Prolegomenon" tells of the author's struggles to meet the publisher's expected word count, a challenge shared by this reviewer.