CRAZY TO LEAVE YOU

A 41-year-old woman is spurred by romantic crisis to confront her relationships to food, body, and identity.

Career-driven Manhattanite Lauren Leo has drifted from one diet to another for as long as she can remember—subsisting, as of late, mainly on egg whites, steamed broccoli, and self-hatred. The daughter of a rigid, perennially size-4 mother who thinks “mayonnaise [is] the work of the devil,” Lauren grew up pressured to skip dessert; jealous of her naturally thin younger sister, Stephanie; and subject to relentless physical critique from her mother. By her long-awaited wedding to summer camp sweetheart Eric, Lauren has finally dieted herself down to size 12, and when he leaves her at the altar, she’s horrified that all her careful work has been upended. As she attempts to pick up the pieces of her life and throw herself back into her work at an advertising agency, Lauren returns to food with gusto, almost as though it’s a forbidden lover: surreptitiously chowing down greasy cheeseburgers in her wedding dress after being dumped; buying a dozen doughnuts for “the office” and polishing them off in her car. Things get complicated when her estranged older sister, Margo—a small-time actress with her own weight problems—shows up unannounced to stay at Lauren’s apartment, bringing up long-buried family problems. Meanwhile, she grows unexpectedly close with Rudy, a chatty driver assigned to her by the ad agency. As Lauren muddles through her changed life circumstances, she confronts the way food has affected everything from her career trajectory to family aspirations—and, when crisis strikes those closest to her, how to put her problems into perspective. This novel is a self-deprecatingly funny take on the standard career-woman–searching-for-love narrative—Lauren’s relationship with food is alternately comical and darkly affecting, lending the plot depth and dimension (which, in certain areas, could be pushed further). Rothstein’s characters sometimes slot into familiar molds, but they're consistently lively and fun to read about. Lauren is a highly relatable protagonist, particularly for anyone who has looked in the mirror and wondered, as she does, “Tell me, please: does this body make me look fat?”

A fun, well-paced jaunt.