The Roxy Letters
A Novel
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
Meet Roxy. For fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Bridget Jones’s Diary comes “just the kind of comic novel we need right now” (The Washington Post) about an Austin artist trying to figure out her life one letter to her ex-boyfriend at a time.
Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically: she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend—and current roommate—Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she’s decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer.
As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she’s ready to be the heroine of her own story. She decides to team up with her two best friends to save Austin—and rescue Roxy’s love life—in whatever way they can. But can this spunky, unforgettable millennial keep Austin weird, avoid arrest, and find romance—and even creative inspiration—in the process?
With timely themes and hilarious, laugh-out-loud moments, Roxy Letters is a smart and clever story that is “bursting with originality, quirky wit, and delightful charm” (Hannah Orenstein, author of Playing with Matches).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Lowry's fizzy epistolary novel (after Wildfire), an aspiring artist tries to thwart gentrification in her Austin, Tex., neighborhood, with madcap results. Roxy, a 28-year-old vegan, never thought she'd be working at a Whole Foods deli counter. Her housemate and ex-boyfriend, Everett, rarely pays rent on time; her dog's vet bills are through the roof; and the tweakers next door seem bent on making her life miserable. When she notices that a shiny athleisure shop has replaced her favorite video store, she vows to "tackle" the place "to the motherfucking ground." Lowry's choice to write the novel as letters to Everett has the destabilizing effect of making Roxy's new friends seem imaginary, like the fabulously quirky Artemis Starla, who seems to Roxy to have been reading her mail after they trade barbs against consumerism. In the letters, Roxy documents her crusade (a hand-painted protest sign reads "NO $100 TIGHTS, WE WANT OUR RIGHTS") and its frequent side trips, divulging accounts of shockingly bad sex (no matter how many offerings she makes to the goddess Venus) and a hilariously humiliating experience at an orgasm convention. While bighearted Roxy manages to land on her feet, her misadventures are often so absurdly cartoonish that the few sobering moments have less impact. Fans of screwball comedies that don't delve too deep should be pleased.
