Literati

A young woman comes into her own amid the chaos of the literary workplace and the mysteries of the LSAT. Coll enthusiasts will remember sweet Clemi, a clerk in the Washington, D.C., bookstore that's the setting forBookish People (2022). The daughter of a powerful literary agent and a famous alcoholic poet whom she met for the first time in that earlier book, 26-year-old Clemi is still trying to figure out her future, having left the bookstore and taken a job at an organization that's had to change its name to "WLNP: Washington Literary Nonprofit" due to scandals in its past. Her first week at work is so unsettling--her boss disappears; the office is ransacked; a huge cat shows up; the annual prize banquet is days away and the caterer has not been paid, because, uh-oh, the organization's bank accounts have just been emptied--that she stops by the bookstore to pick up a study guide for the LSAT. A logical reasoning question about clowns spirals into a classic Coll subplot, with clowns turning up around every corner. LikeBookish People, the novel sparkles with kooky details plucked from literary culture. Coll's naming of characters and titling of their books is a schtick that never gets old, nor does a gleeful running joke about a man who looks exactly like Malcolm Gladwell. Will there be a lost car-key subplot? Of course there will. At the heart of the hijinks is dear, self-effacing Clemi, who keeps getting mistaken for somebody's nanny, most currently the 8-year-old genius son of this year's prizewinner. Though the boy is notorious for having caused $52,000 worth of damage at the Hôtel du Cap in Antibes, he will prove to be another example of Coll's ability to find redemptive qualities in even the most obnoxious characters--a key gift for this chronicler of the egomania, foolishness, and undimmed aspirations of the modern literati. A comedy of errors that gets it just right. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.