Sex as a Second Language
A Novel
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From Alisa Kwitney, the acclaimed author of On the Couch and The Dominant Blonde, comes a wickedly funny new novel about adult education. A teacher of English as a second language, Katherine Miner is an expert in idiomatic phrases, subtle verbal cues, and unwritten cultural rules, but when it comes to the opposite sex, she's baffled.
Her girlfriends and her mother keep telling her that a woman who is about to turn forty needs to approach dating as a job, but Kat's decided to opt for early retirement. It's not that she hates men; she just doesn't trust them. After all, her soon-to-be ex-husband, Logan, has dropped all contact with their son, just as her own father did to her thirty years before.
While Kat prepares her students for the messy business of getting personal, she has no intention of getting herself tangled up in bedsheets and emotions. But Magnus Grimmson, the tall, good-looking, tongue-tied Icelander in the front row, doesn't appear to pose any threat. In fact, the man seems to need more help deciphering women than Kat does decoding men.
Then Kat receives a letter from her father that turns her life upside down. A former spy, Kat's father writes that he wants to get to know her. But her father's reappearance causes unexpected complications, and suddenly Kat finds herself questioning whom she can trust and discovering that she still has a lot to learn about men, friendship, and the kind of nonverbal communication they don't teach in school.
Darkly humorous, emotionally honest, and unabashedly sexy, Alisa Kwitney's novel affirms that forty isn't the end of the road -- sometimes, it's a new beginning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite the appearance of stilettos and a martini within the first two pages, Kwitney's latest novel (after On the Couch) veers into less glamorous, but still humorous, territory than the initial chick lit trappings promise. Nearing 40 and in the midst of a nasty divorce from her philandering actor husband, former soap star Kat Miner takes to teaching English as a second language to support her nine-year-old son, Dashiell. In class, she meets taciturn Icelandic student Magnus Grimmson, who unbeknownst to her, is actually a secret agent sent to make contact with Kat and induce her to bring her long-estranged father a reclusive, retired CIA agent who may have insider knowledge regarding recent political developments in Kyrgyzstan out of hiding. Magnus, a bodice-ripper characterization compared to the refreshingly matter-of-fact heroine, falls for Kat and must navigate between his occupational duties and his romantic urges. Though Kwitney resorts to obvious plot revelation in the end, this is an engaging and intelligently written comedy with a few genuinely titillating sex scenes.