The Exhibition of Persephone Q

DEBUT In this puzzling debut novel, Percy is a woman trapped by her own passivity, a woman whose identity has been defined primarily by her relationship to men. She’s married to Misha, but the arrival of an exhibition catalog of photographs by her former fiancé disrupts her insular world. All of the photographs in the collection are of a nude woman, Persephone Q, and Percy suspects that she is that woman. Aimless, directionless, and unsure, Percy wanders Manhattan fretting about her marriage, her unexpected pregnancy, and what she should do about the photographs. Can she prove she is Persephone Q? Should she tell Misha she is pregnant? Percy’s internal monolog travels with her, but despite her many references to Web 1.0, such as Earthlink, AOL, Napster, and, inexplicably, Boolean logic, it doesn’t feel like the early 2000s it’s said to be.