A Version of the Truth

October 22, 2007
Cassie Shaw, the 30-year-old dyslexic high school dropout narrator of Kaufman and Mack’s follow-up to Literacy and Longing in L.A., is devoid of self-esteem and, as the winsome novel opens, has just been widowed by a jerk who left her nothing but debt. Desperate for a job, Cassie fudges her education background on a job application and snags an entry-level university office job working under William Conner, a charismatic professor of animal behavior who ignites Cassie’s desire for learning—and other things. As Cassie’s lust for knowledge swells and she becomes more involved with Conner, the list of her deceptions lengthens, and it’s only a matter of time until budding beau Conner finds out. Kaufman and Mack lace the narrative with light humor (the rats in California’s Topanga Canyon are like “roaches in NY or liars in LA”) and nods to Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Plato and Keats. Delightfully merging humor, philosophy and reflections on nature, this novel is a lot of fun and might give some readers freshman-year flashbacks.

December 1, 2007
This writing duo who debuted with Literacy and Longing in L.A. (2006) return to bring usCassie Shaw, whose life islike a bad country-and-western song. Her loutish husband has driven off a cliff, and no one feels sympathetic. He ran a tow-truck company, swindled people out of money, slept around, and made his wife feel dumb. So, good riddance. Cassie plucks up her courage, adds a fictitious college degree to her resum, and lands an assistantship in the behavioral-sciences department at the university. Which is fitting: her true passion is for animals, and she worked at a nature conservancy before marriage. Soon she starts auditing classes, discovering that it was her dyslexia, not lack ofintelligence, that kept her from doing well in school. She navigates some tricky love experiences and falls for her male boss, the Thoreau-spouting professor. Will he love her back? Will her lie be exposed? More than a chick-lit novel, thisis really about class conflict, andCassie's disarming, candid forthrightnesscarries the novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)