Super in the City

Zephyr Zuckerman, the 27-year-old heroine of Uviller's debut novel, is a sexy cross between a slacker Nancy Drew and Walter Mitty. She's a hopeless romantic, a self-conscious daydreamer, and a habitual party-crasher. When the superintendent of her parents' apartment building is arrested, Zephyr becomes the new super, and chaos ensues. Emily Janice Card, daughter of author Orson Scott Card, is delightful in her narration of the novel. She interprets the text--and the author's many subtexts--with youthful energy and a furious pace that doesn't sacrifice articulateness. The book is often sexually explicit, and some listeners may find the material silly, especially during Zephyr's frequent lapses into vapid daydreaming. But Uviller's punchy style and Card's lively interpretation make this chic-lit mystery a sexy laugh-out-loud treat. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

November 17, 2008
Uviller’s debut is as gleefully unpretentious as the rhinestones on narrator Zephyr Zuckerman’s thrift-shop dress. “This is not a Jesus-saving kind of story,” Zephyr warns, and, indeed, sex, bodily functions, white lies and general irreverence keep this tale of love, friendship and New York City popping along. Zephyr and her best friends are flawed and lovable: divorcée party-crasher Tag is a globe-trotting scientist; Lucy, a social worker, writes notes on $10 bills and hopes that the right man will answer her call; Mercedes, a violinist, snags a celebrity boyfriend; and Abigail, a professor, falls into Internet-dating catastrophe. Zephyr, meanwhile, has dropped out of school, and her major concern, other than getting over an ex, is figuring out what she wants to be. So when her super is arrested, Zephyr inherits his post and discovers that there is far more happening under her roof than she can handle. The novel gallops at full speed from the very first line, and though there are times when it would serve Uviller well to rein it in a bit, this is undoubtedly smarter and funnier than most other girls-in-the-city novels.