Pre-Owned Secondhand Smoke: 6 (Paperback) 0425198286 9780425198285

Publishers Weekly,The chronic discontent and over-the-top dysfunction of a Southern working-class family are at the heart of this dark comedy. Wilson Bailey has a Ph.D. in organic evolution but he is helpless in the face of his wife's infidelity and his father's cancer. His estranged sister, Zib, is a nihilistic assistant manager at Winn-Dixie, where she is constantly rebuffing the advances of her sleazy boss. Their mother, Ru, is a chain-smoking racist prone to bouts of physical and verbal violence. Both siblings have forged independent lives away from their native New Orleans, but their father's death brings them back together for another round of domestic insanity. Friedmann (Eleanor Rushing; Odds) careens among the viewpoints of Ru, Wilson and Zib; their narratives and the story as a whole are as humorous as they are sad. Zib resents her brother's intelligence and has spent her life pretending to be stupid, compensating by having reckless one-night stands; Wilson was so traumatized by his mother's bullying that he can't even go to the bathroom without thinking of her; and the irrepressible Ru is so ferocious and misguided in her opinions that she's downright enthralling. When she accidentally burns down her house, she begins living on the streets, where she meets Murray, a black homeless woman who challenges her racist beliefs. Friedmann's characters occasionally seem like caricatures, and the different narrators create an erratic tone overall, but the outrageous developments and swift pace make this novel hard to resist. 5-city author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved