2018 School Spending Survey Report
Donna Has Left the Building
Grand Central. Jun. 2019. 416p. ISBN 9781538762417. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781538762448. F
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Memoirist Gilman takes readers on a wild road trip in her second novel (after The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street). Following a tragicomic domestic revelation, suburban mom and recovering alcoholic Donna throws off the mantle of predictability to pursue a midlife crisis for the ages. Donna's bad decisions and worse luck lead her from comical escapades to the harrowing edge of the abyss. As she both craves and rejects the mundane safety of life as she's known it, an unforeseen turn in the road elevates her journey far above the navel-gazing lost weekend it might have been. Gilman channels the best of Jennifer Weiner, especially Best Friends Forever, but the spiritual sibling of this novel is ironically the masterpiece of Weiner's nemesis: Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex. The symmetry of Donna's setting with that of Middlesex will link them for years to come.
VERDICT Literary fiction readers, chick lit fans, suburbanites, mothers, daughters, addicts (recovering and otherwise), immigrants, people with dreams achieved and abandoned—all kinds of readers will love this book. A must-have for public libraries of every size. [See Prepub Alert, 12/17/18; "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/19]
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