Millennial satire, historical fiction and Eldritch horrors are among this week’s fiction reviews, while non-fiction books include guide to sleep and parenting, and a study of why we love the footy. Our critics deliver their verdicts on 10 new releases so you know whether they’re books to buy, borrow or skip.
The Shampoo Effect
Jenny Jackson
Hutchinson Heinemann, $35
In her latest novel, Pineapple Street author Jenny Jackson hooks a quirky contemporary romcom to an astute portrayal of a friendship group in midlife. Caroline Lash is heading to Greenhead, Massachusetts by train start to a writer’s residency, when she steps on a jam doughnut that sprays red slime all over her crotch. Luckily, a hot guy with a napkin helps her out. The offbeat meet-cute gets a reprise when she runs into him again and explains that their initial encounter was a doughnut accident rather a menstruation mishap. Caroline soon falls for Van Whittaker. She’s introduced to his social circle of lifelong friends, thirty-somethings parenting young kids while managing dysfunction and debaucheries of various kinds. (The group has a kidult quality, and Jackson keenly observes the last fumes of youthful recklessness wafting into disillusionment.) The central romance has deepened into cohabitation when Van’s former girlfriend turns up pregnant. Complications ensue, bleeding into a Millennial satire, written in the spirit of John Updike, that’s full of juicy melodrama, with a goodly dollop of sex and scandal.
