A wildly imaginative, rebellious, and tender tale of independence from the critically acclaimed author of Bad Marie.
With each new novel, Marcy Dermansky deploys her “brainy, emotionally sophisticated” (New York Times) prose to greater and greater heights, and The Red Car is no exception.
Leah is living in Queens with a possessive husband she doesn’t love and a long list of unfulfilled ambitions, when she’s jolted from a thick ennui by a call from the past. Her beloved former boss and friend, Judy, has died in a car accident and left Leah her most prized possession and, as it turns out, the instrument of Judy’s death: a red sports car.
Judy was the mentor Leah never expected. She encouraged Leah’s dreams, analyzed her love life, and eased her into adulthood over long lunches away from the office. Facing the jarring disconnect between the life she expected and the one she is now actually living, Leah takes off for San Francisco to claim Judy’s car. In sprawling days defined by sex, sorrow, and unexpected delight, Leah revisits past lives and loves in search of a self she abandoned long ago. Piercing through Leah’s surreal haze is the enigmatic voice of Judy, as sharp as ever, providing wry commentary on Leah’s every move.
Following her “irresistible” (Time) and “wicked” (Slate) novel Bad Marie, Dermansky evokes yet another edgy, capricious, and beautifully haunting heroine―one whose search for realization is as wonderfully unpredictable and hypnotic as the twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway. Tautly wound, transgressive, and mordantly funny, The Red Car is an incisive exploration of one woman’s unusual route to self-discovery.
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“Narrator Soneela Nankani portrays Leah as disconnected from the real world, floating from moment to moment with passive confusion. Her performance highlights Leah’s denial of her failing marriage and faltering career. In contrast, Judy, in flashbacks and in Leah’s memory, speaks in a confident, throaty contralto…Minimal distinctions in the voices of secondary characters reflect Leah’s self-centered experience of the world and highlight her slowly developing ability to take control of her life.”
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