A shocking, hilarious and strangely tender novel about a young woman?s
experiment in narcotic hibernation, aided and abetted by one of the worst
psychiatrists in the annals of literature. Our narrator has many of the
advantages of life, on the surface. Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia
graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid
for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the
heart of things, and it isn?t just the loss of her parents in college, or the
way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship
with her alleged best friend. It?s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth
and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? This story of a year spent
under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs, designed to heal us
from our alienation from this world, shows us how reasonable, even necessary,
that alienation sometimes is. Blackly funny, both merciless and compassionate ?
dangling its legs over the ledge of 9/11 ? this novel is a showcase for the
gifts of one of America?s major young writers working at the height of her
powers.