Kirkus A budding romance with a famous singer forces a TV writer to grapple with her insecurities. Sally Milz, a 36-year-old writer for the Saturday Night Live–esque show The Night Owls, believes that others see her as "a mild-mannered woman of average intelligence and attractiveness." Shot down years ago after confessing her love to fellow TNO writer Elliot (who went on to marry a gorgeous pop star), Sally now keeps romantic prospects at arm's length. At work, she channels her anger at sexist double standards into uproarious sketches like "The Danny Horst Rule," a reference to a schlubby co-worker who, à la SNL's Pete Davidson, is dating well above his station. (Per that rule, a less-than-stunning woman can't pull off the same feat.) Enter this week's host, Noah Brewster, a gorgeous singer/songwriter whom Sally initially views with skepticism but with whom she has undeniable chemistry—a fact that simultaneously delights and terrifies her and sends her running until two years later, when the pair reconnect during the Covid-19 shutdown. Sittenfeld has a gift for plumbing the neuroses of perceptive outsiders ("a spy or an anthropologist" is how Sally characterizes herself). But while in Sittenfeld’s first novel, Prep, Lee Fiora alternated between simmering resentment for her popular classmates and hope that they might embrace her, Sally is both resigned to her fate and more likely to buck it. With an Austen-esque eye for social nuance, the author also deftly teases out the currencies of Sally's world—physical attractiveness, talent, celebrity, youth—and explores how these elements intersect with gender. The book falters somewhat in its quick resolution; given how many pages Sally spends pondering the oddity of her dating Noah, it's disappointing that comparatively little time is devoted to exploring others' reactions to their actual relationship. Overall, though, the work is a pleasure, balancing probing analysis with an absorbing narrative. Romance artfully and entertainingly deconstructed. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Sittenfield, known for creating complicated women (Eligible; Rodham), does the same with Sally, a quirky, whip-smart writer at a fictionalized Saturday Night Live—esque show called The Night Owls. Working closely with celebrities has made her cynical about fake romance in pop culture. When pop star Noah Brewster guest-hosts, Sally writes a few of his sketches, and sparks seem to fly. Fast-forward to 2020, in the depths of the COVID lockdown; Noah and Sally reconnect, and the sparks start a bonfire. The desire in both of them to connect is so strong it bursts off the page. Sittenfield's writing is crisp and current, and her cultural references make this tender story sizzle. Reminiscent of 1999's Notting Hill, in which Hugh Grant as an everyman British bookstore owner falls in love with Julia Roberts's Hollywood actress, the novel also contains Sittenfield's trademark themes of gender politics and social class. VERDICT Buy multiple copies and get ready for the movie that's sure to follow Sittenfeld's latest novel. She consistently proves herself as one of the most readable contemporary novelists. Her books are impossible to put down, and the characters will continue to swim around in readers' minds long after the final chapters.—Beth Liebman Gibbs

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Publishers Weekly The culture wars and political drama of Sittenfeld’s best work are absent in her underwhelming latest (after Rodham), which follows a successful but insecure woman who catches the eye of a rock star. It’s 2018, and Sally Milz, 36, is a seasoned staff writer for the sketch comedy show The Night Owls, a thinly disguised SNL. She is busy pulling all-nighters and writing up a storm of skits, one of which is a spoof on gorgeous women actors dating nerdy, wordy guys—and how the opposite would never happen—when Noah Brewster, the host and musical guest for the upcoming episode, asks her to help him with some material. Despite their chemistry, Sally cannot believe that a gorgeous celebrity could fall in love with her. Then Covid comes along before they reconnect, first with a long string of emails during July 2020. In the third act, a month later, they reunite in person. The email thread goes on a bit too long, sapping the narrative of momentum, though Sittenfeld does manage to evoke Sally’s vulnerability (“because I’m in danger of confusing the romance of emailing with the romance of romance,” she writes to Noah). There’s some brilliant character work, but as Cinderella stories go, this doesn’t quite stand out. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Apr.)

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Book list When yet another shmopey guy—this time, her office mate at the Saturday Night Live–style show where she works—starts dating an uber-hot and talented female celebrity, comedy writer Sally channels her rage/certainty "that a gorgeous male celebrity would never fall in love with an ordinary, dorky, unkempt woman" into a sketch. The host and musical guest for this week's episode of The Night Owls is the "outrageously handsome" superstar Noah Brewster, who seeks Sally's help punching up his own sketch—she's known around the studio as the queen of comedic structure. Sure that there could be nothing between them, due to the aforementioned law-turned-sketch, intimacy-phobic (and perhaps ordinary, dorky, and unkempt) Sally is her best, brilliant, warm self with Noah during the weeklong lead-up to the show, a fun and frenetic frame for the book's first half that's full of insider-feeling, behind-the-scenes excitement. You can see where this might be going, and yet how much you'll enjoy getting there. Dialogue zips and zings as hearts plummet and soar through Sally and Noah's meeting, misunderstanding, and years-later rapprochement as COVID-19 dawns. Sittenfeld's (Rodham, 2020) meta-romance is an utterly perfect version of itself, a self-aware and pandemic-informed love story that's no less romantic for being either.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Sittenfeld's fiction has flown off shelves since her debut, Prep (2005), and fans will flock to this pure-fun, feminist romp.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Publishers Weekly Pulitzer winner Desmond follows up Evicted with a powerful inquiry into why the U.S. is “the richest country on earth, with more poverty than any other advanced democracy.” Noting that 38 million Americans cannot afford basic necessities, Desmond argues that poverty persists because others benefit from it: workers are paid non-living wages and unions are discouraged in order to boost the pay of corporate executives; poor consumers are overcharged for rental housing and financial services so that landlords and banks can prosper; and affluent families benefit from tax breaks, student loans, and other forms of federal aid while welfare programs are publicly belittled and made difficult to access. Poverty is further entrenched by the underfunding of education, mass transit, and healthcare, Desmond argues, creating a world of private opulence and public squalor. His solutions include eliminating the residential segregation that blocks poor families from well-funded public services and employment and housing opportunities. More broadly, he calls for better-off Americans to acknowledge their complicity in perpetuating poverty and to pressure the government to undertake “an aggressive, uncompromising antipoverty agenda.” Though the path to achieving these reforms isn’t always clear, Desmond enriches his detailed and trenchant analysis with poignant reflections on America’s “unblushing inequality” and the “anomie of wealth.” It’s a gut-wrenching call for change. Agent: Katherine Flynn, Kneerim & Williams. (Mar.)

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Book list Sociologist and MacArthur fellow Desmond follows up his Carnegie Medal–winning Evicted (2016) with a brilliantly researched and artfully written study of how the U.S. has failed to effectively address the issue of poverty. Grounding his thesis in statistics that defy easy analysis and show that the ebb and flow of the problem continues regardless of political leadership, recession, or economic boom, he provides readers with unforgettable images—“if America’s poor founded a country . . . [it] would have a bigger population than Australia or Venezuela”—and pointed truths about how individual states failed to allocate funds to assist their poor. For example, Oklahoma spent tens of millions in federal poverty funds on the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. Arizona used millions on abstinence-only education. Maine supported a Christian summer camp, and Mississippi officials committed fraud on a scale that has led to multiple indictments. Thankfully, as Desmond reveals the frustrating ways in which private and public systems designed to help the poor have fallen short, he also uses his knowledge of the subject to explore what works and identify potential solutions that merit further consideration. This thoughtful investigation of a critically important subject, a piercing title by an astute writer who is both passionate and fearless, is valuable reading for all concerned with affecting positive change.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Library Journal Pulitzer Prize—winning sociologist Desmond (Evicted) argues that poverty exists in the United States because wealthy people benefit from it. While the United States ranks among the richest countries in the world, it has the largest amount of poverty; the author expects that to expand. Presently, every one in three Americans work in low-paying jobs, one in eight live in severe poverty, and the wealth gap between Black and white families remains large. For example, in the average white family, the head of household with a high school diploma is better paid than the head of a Black household with a college degree. The author also points to when most white women did not have to work outside their home; whereas Black women, to survive, had to work any job available. The author suggests solutions by advocating for what he calls "poverty abolitionists," people he hopes will insist on collective bargaining and producing true economic rewards for workers. He also urges the government to end hunger and create laws that ensure all Americans make a livable wage. VERDICT This book will likely interest scholars. Add it to social and behavioral sciences collections.—Claude Ury

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Kirkus A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted. “America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point. A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning Evicted, a game changer that has sold over 750,000 copies, MacArthur fellow Desmond considers why the uber-wealthy United States has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. It's precisely because of that wealth, he argues, with the affluent benefiting from keeping poor people poor, whether by suppressing wages, driving up housing costs, or continuing to monopolize money and opportunities they already have.

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