Woman No. 17

March 6, 2017
A newly-separated writer hires a mysterious young artist as a live-in nanny in this engaging examination of modern art and family dynamics. After unexpectedly asking her husband Karl to move out, Lady enlists the enchanting S to help care for her toddler, Devin, as well as keep an eye on Seth, her mute teenage son from an earlier marriage. As alternating narration quickly reveals, S is a fake name, a front for her real reason for applying for the job. Most of the novel concerns the complicated family situations of Lady and S, primarily Lady’s fraught relationship with Kit, her famous photographer sister-in-law. The book takes its title from a suggestive photo that Kit once took of Lady, a piece of art whose significance informs everything from S’s mother’s alcoholism to Lady’s estrangement from Seth’s biological father. The disclosure of an affair forces each character to reckon with how they’ve deceived both themselves and one another. Lepucki’s (California) brisk style and arresting characterizations make for a compelling portrait of womanhood in the present moment, right down to its intriguing integration of social media.

February 1, 2017
In the Hollywood Hills, a smart, damaged mother of two hires a nanny so she can work on a memoir--but the younger woman is no less a piece of work than she is and intent on an art project of her own.Lepucki's (California, 2014, etc.) third work of fiction is a stylish dramedy in he said, she said style. One narrator is Lady Daniels, who has just sold a memoir based on a magazine article she wrote about her 18-year-old son, Seth, a charismatic child who's never spoken though he has no disability and can communicate with irony and insight using American Sign Language, his iPad, and his Twitter feed. Now she needs someone to take care of Devin, her extroverted toddler, so she can work on her book--and it won't be his father, Karl, since she just kicked him out of the house. He's staying with his famous-artist sister, who took the revealing photo of Lady titled Woman No. 17. The other narrator is Lady's new nanny, a recent college graduate whose real name is Esther Shapiro but who's going by S Fowler. Among the many things S does not reveal in her job interview is the fact that she's just begun a conceptual art project devoted to impersonating her mother as a young woman--even though her mother was and is an impulsive, unbalanced alcoholic. Lady and Esther have much in common (to the point that you sometimes forget which one you're reading). Both had terrible mothers, both lie easily and often, and both are obsessed with Seth. These things draw them together less as friends than as self-involved dervishes on a collision course. Always enjoyable if not always believable, this novel succeeds by staying light on its feet. Or, as one character puts it, "Please don't monetize my bunny."

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February 15, 2017

The title sounds like this is the next Girl on the Train-style thriller, but it's not. Woman No. 17 is the name of a photograph by renowned artist Kit Daniels, and Lady Daniels is its subject. Now estranged from Kit's brother, Karl, Lady is struggling to raise her toddler Devin as well as her 18-year-old son Seth from a previous relationship. Seth is mute, and his relationship with Lady is complicated. Lady hires a young nanny, who goes by "S," to care for Devin while Lady ostensibly pens her memoir (but actually spends more time obsessing over Twitter). S has her own issues, and a plan to make her mark in the art world. It involves channeling her mother, an outspoken alcoholic. Along the way, Lady and S develop a strange, shallow friendship. To further complicate matters, S and Seth also have a connection. In her second novel (after California), Lepucki has something to say about mothers and children, and possibly art, but it's a mixed message and not convincing. VERDICT Those with a high tolerance for unlikable women or an interest in the artistic process may be intrigued enough to read to the end. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/16.]--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017

Lady finds that there's something disturbing about the live-in nanny she's hired so that she can finish writing her book. Following 2014's California, a New York Times best seller and Discover and LibraryReads pick; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.