Mimi

Bach, sculpture, plastic surgery, public speaking, feminism, and a New York love story like no other, this is the hilarious Lucy Ellmann's most extraordinary novel to date. It's Christmas Eve in Manhattan. Harrison Hanafan, a noted plastic surgeon, falls on his ass. There stood a weird girl in a coat like a duvet. She kindly conjures the miracle of a taxi. While recuperating with Franz Schubert, Bette Davis, and a foundling cat, Harrison adds items to his life's work, a List of Melancholy Things (puppetry, shrimp-eating contests, Walmart) before going back to rhinoplasties, liposuction, and the peccadilloes of his obnoxious colleagues. Then Harrison collides once more with the strangely helpful woman, Mimi, who bursts into his life with all her curves and chaos. They soon fall emphatically in love. And, as their love-making reaches a whole new kind of climax, the sweet smell of revolution is in the air. By turns celebratory and scathing, romantic and dyspeptic, Mimi is a story of music, New York, sculpture, martinis, public speaking, quilt-stealing, eggnog and, most of all, love.