Trouble

March 2, 2009
Christensen follows The Great Man
with this slightly lesser work, a coming-of-middle-age novel that explores the sexual lives of three women in their 40s. Best friends since their college days, trust-funder Indrani, therapist Josie and L.A. rocker Raquel are like three very different but close sisters. After flirting with a man at a New York party, Josie realizes that she is sexually starving and decides to leave her husband, though Indrani thinks it’s a terrible move. Meanwhile, on the left coast, the nearly washed-up ex-junkie Raquel becomes embroiled in a scandal when she’s smeared as the other woman to a young actor with a pregnant girlfriend. Raquel hightails it to Mexico City and begs a less than-reluctant Josie to join her. From here the novel takes a predictable route as the women drink their way across the city, Raquel spirals further out of control, and Josie’s inner vixen is awakened. The novel loses some of its mojo in the location change—Mexico City seems just out of focus—but the characters are marvelously realized, and when Christensen’s on a roll, her wit is irresistible.

April 15, 2009
Christensen, who wrote about passionate septuagenarians in the Pen/Faulkner Award–winning The Great Man (2007), turns her attention to wilted 40-somethings.

Manhattan therapist Josie realizes her long marriage to her professor husband Anthony is over. It's all very civilized. Anthony is sad but agreeable while their precocious 11-year-old daughter Wendy, adopted as an infant from China, decides to stay in the apartment with Anthony. Despite Josie's claims that Wendy hates her, Wendy seems remarkably supportive. Meanwhile, Josie's half Mexican college friend Raquel, now a major singing star, is targeted by scandal blogs after her affair with a television hunk half her age. Hiding from the media in Mexico City, Raquel asks Josie to keep her company, and Josie, on a two-week Christmas break from her practice, agrees. Raquel, who has been through drug rehab more than once, shows Josie a good time heavy on tequila, cigarettes and spicy food, with some church and museum visits thrown in. On the plaza they meet David, a one-armed native artist raised in Chicago. Through David, Josie and Raquel join the Mexico City bohemian artist scene. Tragedy will ultimately separate the women.

Christensen couples a romanticizing, tour guide approach to Mexico City with cardboard Mexican characters for an uncomfortable effect. Despite lively sex and some clever early scenes, the novel has a tepid half-baked quality.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
Christensen follows up the award-winning "The Great Man" with this tale of girlfriends on a wild adventure. Manhattan psychotherapist Josie realizes that she must step out of her staid, platonic marriage. The same week Josie tells her husband that she's leaving, her famous rock musician girlfriend, Raquel, gets caught in a scandal. The two flee to Mexico, where Josie, after so many years of being a good wife and a mother to a difficult teenage daughter, really lets loose, drinking and smoking to no end. She also meets Felipe, a beguiling artist, and experiences a sexual reawakening. But it's not a perfect holiday; Raquel, a recovering drug addict, starts a steep descent into her old habits. Though Josie tries her hardest to help her oldest friend, tragedy is in the air. Christensen's sparse, clean writing style captures the scintillating Mexican night life, and one can almost taste the greasy street tacos and mescal. The compelling plot will keep readers turning pages, even as clouds of tension and despair drift ever closer. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/1/09.]Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2009
At the start, this feels like a stylishly sexy, midlife-upheaval novel featuring upscale New Yorkersa spa treatment for the mind. Not so fast. This is mordant and sly Christensen, author of the PEN/Faulkner Awardwinning The Great Man (2007). And, sure enough, her new novel metamorphoses into a scouring tale of psychological paradox. Josie, a 45-year-old therapist, is struck, as though with a gods lightning bolt, by the realization that her marriage is over. At the same time, her longtime friend, rock star Raquel, is being shredded for her affair with a much younger actor, and the worst of her tormentors is a famously vicious gossip blogger. As Christensen keenly assesses the particular damage wrought by cyber slander, Raquel flees to Mexico City, and Josie joins her there, thrilled to be piloted through the metropolis high life on a river of tequila. As Josie reawakens to lifes pleasures, Raquel shuts down. What sort of shrink is Josie? She seems clueless about peoples feelings. Bewitching readers with a narcotic blend of eroticism and suspense, Christensen raises unsettling questions about our inability to understand ourselves or others and marvels over our consuming fascination with ritualized confrontation, whether its the voraciousness of the paparazzi or the ancient drama of the bullfight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)