DANCE WITH ME, FRANNY NICE SHIRT

Stephenson offers a tale of self-discovery about an adrift 22-year-old Californian who finds purpose in a new job as a live-in biographer.

It’s 2011, and Franny Chase feels caught between the grind of low-wage, part-time work at a “la-di-da Westwood Village bed/bath boutique” and her dream of becoming a professional writer. However, when she accepts a position as live-in assistant to Dorothy Gaines, an overbearing and eccentric older woman who wants Franny to write her memoir, her employment becomes more than an ordinary job. What begins as a way for Franny to make ends meet soon leads her to a web of expectations, secrets, and fragile alliances inside the grand house she now lives in. Stephenson’s novel flows easily between past and present, explores the young narrator’s uneasy friendship with wealthy divorcée Vicky Shirley, as she deals with her own recent divorce; her ill-fated flirtation with Dorothy’s charming but dangerous grandson Bobby, a lawyer; and Franny's desire to find a family after the early deaths of her parents. The characters she encounters don’t serve as obstacles, simply there to make Franny’s life harder; instead, they function more like mirrors, showing her all the fears, flaws, and strengths that others see in her. The novel’s use of dialogue and atmosphere is excellent, revealing drawing rooms glowing with color and texture (“All accommodating the pleasing accumulated clutter of a life. All glowing with beeswax rubbed to a shine”), and parties limned with tension and possibility. Its willingness to dwell on themes of self-doubt and longing will resonate with readers who appreciate narrative introspection; others, though, may find the repetitiveness of the narrator’s insecurity slows the pace. Still, there’s a lively push and pull between biting humor and bruised sincerity that elevates the work. It’s not inaccurate to call it a coming-of-age story, but it situates itself less in youthful romance than in the messy, enduring work of survival, reinvention, and belonging.

A deeply affecting novel that blends sharp humor with aching vulnerability.