Till the Fat Lady Sings

Manya Miriam Mittelman has an uneasy relationship with her flesh, of which there is a bit too much by the standards of Columbia University circa 1992. "If only the flesh weren't so closely connected with the spirit!" Manya reflects. "The spirit has such wonderful moments of illumination, and all the flesh ever does is intrude and say, 'We're hungry now. We have to pee now. We're horny now.'" Till the Fat Lady Sings traces the intertwined fortunes of plump, thoughtful. Manya and her circle of acquaintances at Columbia, all of whom are grappling in one way or another with the unbearable weight of being in the 1990s: Manya's flamboyant fellow students, punk-neurasthenic Ophelia (nee Jane Saunders) and angst-ridden Arthur, organizers of the mysterious Doomsday Coalition; Feminism 101 professor Emilia Larsdatter (nee Emily Larson), who has broken up with the tempestuous poet Saul, though "in point of fact their relationship was not exactly. Over. Like malaria, it recurred from time to time in uncontrollable fits"; Boris, womanizing Russian emigre owner of Zaftigue, the boutique where Manya works on weekends; and Vanessa, who "was having a great deal of difficulty getting over Boris. Perhaps it was her job; she was an editor at LoveLorn romances, for their Regency line of novels. All day long Vanessa read about eighteen-year-olds whose impish flouting of convention ('I shall not perform my needlepoint. Mama!') led them straight into the arms of dashing rakes ('You have heard rumors, Minerva, of my way with the fair sex ... ')." Wickedly funny, worldly wise, Alisa Kwitney displays extraordinary sureness and emotional wisdom in her first novel. She's a contender.