The Red Car

A wildly imaginative, rebellious, and tender tale of independence from the critically acclaimed author of Bad Marie. With each new novel, Marcy Dermansky deploys her brainy, emotionally sophisticated (New York Times) prose to greater and greater heights, and The Red Car is no exception. Leah is living in Queens with a possessive husband she doesnt love and a long list of unfulfilled ambitions when shes jolted from a thick ennui by a call from the past. Her beloved former boss and friend, Judy, has died in a car accident and left Leah her most prized possession and, as it turns out, the instrument of Judys death: a red sports car. Judy was the mentor Leah never expected. She encouraged Leahs dreams, analyzed her love life, and eased her into adulthood over long lunches away from the office. Facing the jarring disconnect between the life she expected and the one she is now actually living, Leah takes off for San Francisco to claim Judys car. In sprawling days defined by sex, sorrow, and unexpected delight, Leah revisits past lives and loves in search of a self she abandoned long ago. Piercing through Leahs surreal haze is the enigmatic voice of Judy, as sharp as ever, providing wry commentary on Leahs every move. Dermansky evokes yet another edgy, capricious, and beautifully haunting heroine?one whose search for realization is as wonderfully unpredictable and hypnotic as the twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway. Tautly wound, transgressive, and mordantly funny, The Red Car is an incisive exploration of one womans unusual route to self-discovery.