Live a Little, by Kim Green
First line: ”Have you ever wondered what you’d do if they told you that you were dying?”
Raquel Rose, a middle-aged Californian housewife, discovers she’s dying of breast cancer. Instead of screaming profanities or crying, she thinks the unthinkable: of having sex with her doctor. It doesn’t happen, but so begins the sometimes shocking, always zany tale of a misdiagnosis gone awry. The underappreciated mom of apathetic teens and wife of dud husband starts getting the attention and life she’s always wanted. People sit up and take notice. People listen. People fall in love with her personality. At first she says what she thinks because she believes she’s dying. Then after achieving a sort of celeb status on her sister’s talk show and raising an enormous amount of money for research, feels too awkward to take it back and reveal that she really doesn’t have BC. Besides, for the first time in her life, she’s really making a difference, right? Green’s bubbly prose and bulls-eye been-there relevance make us almost buy Raquel’s lie, though we quickly side with her best friend Sue who tells her she must be mentally ill to have kept it up this long. Thankfully Raquel gets her comeuppance, learns her lesson and offers something priceless at the end of the novel that leaves us satisfied. Green oozes talent on every page, and I can’t wait to see where she takes us next. I’m going to order Paging Aphrodite, her ’07 release, as soon as I’m done here.
For: Moms needing a shot of stardom mixed with reality check. – Malena Lott