Very Nice

Nineteen-year-old Rachel Klein puts the moves on her writing professor, Zahid Azzam, and then looks after his poodle, Princess, when he travels to Pakistan to visit his dying granny. This end-of-term hook-up opens Dermansky’s fourth novel (after The Red Car), but plenty more follows as Rachel’s recently divorced mother, Becca, takes up with Zahid. Mismatched lovers and bad decisions lead to excruciating moments, and these engulf Rachel’s father and lover as well as Zahid’s colleagues, twin sisters Khloe and Kristi. The action lasts one month and takes place mostly in Manhattan and in a wealthy part of Connecticut. While the genre is comedy of manners, the book comments on nearly every domestic issue of our times, usually with a skewer at the ready. Though written for adults, this tale could vie for YALSA’s Alex Awards: it’s knowing, articulate, funny, audacious, and attuned to Twitterati attention spans. The characters star in alternating chapters, and their inner thoughts and dialog propel compulsive reading to the bloody end.