the only reason i am shelving this with the "especially great novels" is because it's lorrie moore & i love her, even though this book is kind of ridiculous. jared asked me what it was about last night & i said, "well, it's about this 20-year-old college student who takes a job as a nanny. she's nannying for this white couple that adopts a baby that is biracial, she's part-black. they think they are being good nice liberals who won't let race stand in the way of their parenting, but as time goes on, they start to realize that transracial adoption is more complicated than they bargained for, like dealing with weird people in stores & stuff. & the nanny starts dating this guy from school who tells her he is brazilian, but i guess he is actually a muslim jihadist or something & one day she goes to his house after work & all his furniture is gone & he's just sitting there with his computer & his prayer rug & some cyanide tablets & he tells her that he got called away to do some kind of terrorism job or something & breaks her heart. & she is also getting really attached to the baby. but then the mom tells her that she used to have a kid when she lived on the east coast, but when the kid was four, the dad made the kid get out of the car on the freeway because he was being a brat & then he had to drive away & then he freaked out & tried to circle back & the kid tried to cross the highway when he saw the car coming & got killed. & the adoption agency finds out about this & takes the baby away. & also, the nanny's brother enlists & gets killed in afghanistan."

until i said it all out loud, it had seemed like a pretty good book. but suddenly it seemed totally crazy & really forced. jared was like, "what the fuck are you reading, lady? this is ridiculous." what he actually said was, "wow, it really takes a lot of effort to make a 20-year-old college student's life relevant to current events, huh?"

when i thought about it, it seemed kind of like a poor man's ruth ozeki. ruth ozeki also manages to fit in like 37 hot topic political issues in every novel--from war brides to abortion to mixed race children to eco-terrorism to porn. but the difference is that her protaganists are a little more engaging. the protaganist of this lorrie moore book, tassie, just seemed kind of bland & blah & not all that interesting, despite attempts to give her personality by making her play bass guitar. there were too many places where she uses a "cute" turn of phrase & attributes it to her brother or her roommate or whoever, & it freaked me out & made me wonder if lorrie moore just collects these clever little sayings to use them in her books. which she probably does, but i found it somewhat distasteful. like the narrative process was just too transparent. it took me out of the story, it made it seem like moore was trying too hard. sorry. i really wish i would have liked it better.