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Rachel Spark is an irreverent, sexually
eager, financially unstable thirty-year-old college instructor
who moves back home when her mother is diagnosed with terminal
breast cancer. As she tries to ease her mother, a perpetually
cheerful woman, toward the inevitable, Rachel turns from one
man to the next -- sometimes comically, sometimes catastrophically
-- as if her own survival depended upon it.
Ella Bloom, an adult student in Rachel's
poetry class, has aspirations beyond her work at a local family
planning clinic. But she spends her nights wondering why her
husband kissed one of her colleagues and whether it will lead
to a full-fledged affair. She is also preoccupied with one
of her repeat patients, Georgia, a teenager whose frequent
clinic visits speak volumes. What they all have in common
is their desire for love, despite its many obstacles.
A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That
is a novel rife with wit and compassion. A provocative, assured
new voice in literary fiction, Lisa Glatt eyes the yardsticks
by which we constantly measure our world and ourselves --
devotion, lust, forgiveness, and courage.
Lisa Glatt was the winner of the
2002 Mississippi Review Prize for fiction. Her work has appeared
in various publications, including Columbia, Other Voices,
Indiana Review, and Swink. She lives in Long Beach,
California, with her husband, the poet David Hernandez. Visit
her website at www.lisaglatt.com.
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