OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE

by Scarlett Thomas - available in bookstores

I've been struggling with OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE for about two weeks. Usually I get engaged in a novel fairly quickly and don't want to put it down until I'm finished; but not this one.  I kept putting it aside and reading other books. 

When I picked it up again over the weekend, I realized that although I was half-way through OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE, I just didn't care enough about the protagonist, Meg Carpenter, or her silly relationship with her unemployed live-in boyfriend, her attraction to an older man, or her jealousy of her childhood friend, Rosa.
Meg spends much of her time ghostwriting novels while being unable to focus on writing her own.  She goes off on tangents about THE MATRIX, Chekhov and everything else under the sun.  

Ms. Thomas pretty much lost me totally when her character decides that her own novel is just going to be disconnected jottings from the notebook she keeps.  Unfortunately, that's exactly what the author offered us; disconnected dialogs that have no impact on a meandering story line that seems to go nowhere.

DEAR MONEY

by Martha McPhee - available in hardcover

DEAR MONEY is more than just a nice story. Don't get me wrong, it's a terrifically nice story but it's also a serious look at the current financial crisis.

India Palmer is a writer whose books have never given her the financial success she expected. Her husband is a successful artist but together they can't produce the income for the life India aspires to in New York City. Enter Win Johns, a wealthy and charismatic financier who bets that he can turn India into a bond trader within 18 months. India's frustration with her family's financial plight leads her right to Win's office and into the crazy world of buying and selling bonds as well as mortgage backed securities in the secondary market.

Perhaps my previous employment as a mortgage underwriter during the turbulent 1980's brought DEAR MONEY nearer and dearer to my heart, but Martha McPhee has created a different type of thriller with her insight into the world of high finance. She dazzles us with LTVs, basis points and all manner of financial lingo. I have to admit that I've often wondered how our government and lending institutions didn't learn their lesson; many of the same financial formulas applied in the '80s helped to create the current mortgage crisis we're experiencing today.

You'll have to read DEAR MONEY to find out if India continues in the world of finance or returns to her first passion. This is not "chick lit"; it's much more intelligent than that. Kudos to Martha McPhee for creating such a well written and timely novel.