In poet and small press editor Liz Kay's first novel, Monsters: A Love Story, Omaha, Neb., is much more than mail-order steaks and Warren "The Sage of Omaha" Buffett. It is the home of recently widowed Stacey Lane, mother of two grade-school boys and author of the feminist novel-in-verse Monsters in the Afterlife--a retelling of the Frankenstein story featuring a woman monster, about, as she describes it, "gender ideals and sexual power dynamics." Despite its slight first printing and obvious political agenda, it implausibly catches the eye of sexy, boffo Hollywood top dog actor Tommy DeMarco, who has his go-to assistant contact Stacey and fly her to the Turks and Caicos to negotiate buying the film rights, retaining her as a screenwriter. And just like that, Stacey drops her boys at her homemaker sister's house and flies to Hollywood to hammer out a filmable script. Still shaken by the car wreck death of her husband and doing her best as a single mom, Stacey leaves the world of "organic juice boxes and baby-carrot snack packs," bumper bowling birthday parties and pee-wee football ("The parents in this league are insane. Like they tailgate. Who tailgates at pee-wee football?"), and falls into the sunshine fantasyland of limos and swimming pools--and, with considerable help from Tommy's top drawer booze, into the seductive, womanizing star's bed.
But who's seducing whom? Kay's protagonist is no star-smitten bimbo just off the bus. Stacey may live in Omaha, but she was raised by intellectuals in Northern California, schooled on the East Coast, and knows how to use her brains and good looks to get what she thinks she wants. Dressing for a meeting with the film's artsy director and the production team, she chooses her attire carefully: "I pick a pair of gray jeans. They're skintight, any tighter they'd bruise my hips.... I pull on a tailored navy cotton tee. It looks simple, but it cost a fortune. It's cut a little lower than I remember, and while it's not see-through, it hints that maybe it could be." She has to fight the director to keep the movie true to her poetic vision while he reminds her that "people go to poetry to expand their minds and sh*t. They go to the movies to be entertained... the ending to this thing isn't even dark, it's f*cking bleak. It makes me want to blow my brains out."
Stacey is a complicated woman trying to sort out the conflicting tugs of motherhood, grief, professional success and personal satisfaction. Monsters: A Love Story is a smart, satirical feminist novel, but as the subtitle suggests, it's also a romance. If it doesn't change your life, it is nonetheless a diverting fantasy about how that just might happen. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Shelf Talker: Liz Kay cleverly takes a frazzled, recently widowed Omaha poet and mother and drops her into the boozy, razzle-dazzle of Hollywood moviemaking.