You Don't Love Me Yet
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
Lucinda Hoekke works at The Complaint Line, listening to anonymous callers air their random grievances. She becomes captivated by the ruminations of one particular caller, and they fall desperately in love. Lucinda also plays bass in a struggling band whose lyricist, Bedwin, is suffering from writer's block, and whose lead singer, Matthew, has kidnapped a kangaroo from the local zoo. Hoping to re-charge the band's creative energy, Lucinda 'suggests' some of The Complainer's philosophical musings to Bedwin, who transforms them into brilliant songs - with disastrous consequences. What results is a comedy of plagiarism, usurpation, and sex, with delightful echoes of Jane Austen's Emma
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lethem (Fortress of Solitude; Motherless Brooklyn; etc.) strays from hometown Brooklyn to recount the near-fame experience of a Los Angeles alternative rock band. Its success depends on bass guitarist Lucinda Hoekke, an unwitting femme fatale whose irrational whims torture the artsy Gen-Xers in her orbit. When the novel opens, she's answering phones for a complaint line designed to also function as a "theatrical piece" and is charmed by the eloquent gripes of one serial caller, a professional phrase writer named Carl. (He's responsible for coining "All thinking is wishful," among others.) They embark on a sex-drenched bender that culminates with the band's debut performance a breakout success. Lucinda is the band's "secret genius," having provided the ideas for the catchiest songs; only she cribbed them from Carl, whose cooperation must be purchased with a token position in the band. Zany disaster ensues in this entertaining but largely insubstantial romantic farce. Lethem tricks out the plot with his usual social wit (music moguls are "unyouthful men in youthful clothes"), but from a writer whose previous books have carved new notches on the literary wall, this measures up as stunted growth.
