The Nakeds

April 27, 2015
On a spring day in 1970, while Nina and Asher fight in their kitchen, hurling accusations and glassware at each other, their young daughter, Hannah, makes her way to first grade—walking on neighbor’s lawns and dodging garbage cans, absorbed in her own thoughts—when a drunk driver slams into her. For nearly the next 10 years, Hannah endures life with a cast on her leg, feeling insecure and burdened by her broken limb. The dissolution of her parents’ marriage, and the accident that leaves her encumbered with multiple casts that never seem to fix her leg, thrusts Hannah into young adulthood. With grace and maturity, Hannah learns to accept her once-Jewish father’s new faith and wife (the woman who ultimately broke up her family), and her mother’s newfound sexual freedom, nudist lifestyle, and young husband. Martin Kettle, the driver who left Hannah at the scene, continues through life troubled and guilt-ridden about his past. He believes his secret visits to the hospital to visit Hannah and drop off gifts while she sleeps are a form of atonement. Martin makes gradual progress in overcoming his demons and addictions, but will he ever admit full responsibility for what he’s done and move on? Glatt’s (A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That) well-developed characters and their intersecting stories leave the reader wondering what will happen next.

April 15, 2015
The latest novel from the author of A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (2004). Seven-year-old Hannah Teller is on her way to school when she's hit by a car. Martin Kettle-just out of high school, still drunk from the night before-is the driver who injures Hannah and leaves her by the side of the road. Glatt follows the intertwined lives of these two characters as they deal with the accident's aftermath. As a little girl, Hannah is precocious and shy. While her intellectual curiosity persists, her reticence falls away-bit by bit-as she grows into a teenager. But the series of casts she has to endure as doctor after doctor tries to help her walk again serves as a barrier between Hannah and the kids around her. She sees the world as divided between the normal and the damaged, and she wants desperately to resume her place among the normal. Unfortunately for Hannah, her leg isn't her only obstacle. Even by the standards of Southern California in the 1970s, her family is...different. Her father leaves her mother and Judaism for his mistress, evangelical Christianity, and surfing. Her mother marries a psychology student specializing in sexuality, which leads to weekends at a nudist colony. Hannah has a lot to navigate-on crutches-and she does so with a mordant wit that makes her delightful company. Martin's story is sadder but not without its moments of comedy and gentle beauty. Immediately after the accident, he's paralyzed by guilt-an emotional analog to Hannah's immobility. First, he tries to hide; then he tries to run. Ultimately, neither helps much. Throughout this novel, hope is as much a curse as it is a blessing, and in the end, Glatt doesn't shy away from this ambiguity. What she leaves her characters-and her readers-with is possibility. Funny, wise, and painfully honest.

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May 15, 2015

Glatt (A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That) sets her new work in 1970s California, with the sexual revolution, California crazes, and shifting personal identity moving the plot. While Nina and Archer Teller are busy arguing in their kitchen, their six-year-old daughter, Hannah, decides to walk to school alone. She is struck by a car whose drunk driver leaves the scene. During Hannah's long recovery (her leg is in a cast for much of the next decade), her parents divorce, her father remarries and finds Jesus, her mother remarries and joins a nudist colony, and they all reinvent themselves. Martin, the drunk driver, is haunted by guilt but can't bring himself to admit to his crime; instead he loses himself in the tacky pleasures of Las Vegas. The resolution of the story's crisis is left to the reader's imagination. VERDICT Glatt creates characters whose choices change the dynamics of life as they know it, and her work will appeal to readers of general fiction.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2015
Six-year-old Hannah Teller is the victim of a hit and run. When she finally leaves the hospital, her leg is in a cast, where it will remain for much of the following decade. Hanna's slow recovery takes place alongside her parents' quickly approaching divorce. Her mother, Nina, remarries a much younger man who introduces her to the sexual revolution. Hannah's father remarries a much younger woman who converts him to Christianity despite his Jewish upbringing. Hannah's life consists of bouncing back and forth between parents at war. Meanwhile, Martin, the driver of the car, lives in terror of being discovered and is deeply remorseful, spending much of his next decade trying to placate his guilt with drink and drugs. Glatt (A Girl Becomes a Comma like That, 2007) has written a powerfully absorbing novel that engages from start to finish. Her portrait of Southern California in the swinging seventies is so clearly drawn and her characters so real, it is easy to forget this is a work of fiction. A captivating read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)