Breaking Away from the Herd

...I would officially qualify as decent folk, a good person living among good people...

...Industry insiders have archly dubbed the genre "Chick Lit...

...Meghan Daum deftly avoids being relegated to the Urban Fiction realm by bravely plunking her heroine squarely in the middle of nowhere—or the Midwest...

...The winter proves more brutal than she imagined, small town gossip rapidly becomes claustrophobic, and a new city girl arrives on the scene...

...Much of the town has given way to typical suburban sprawl...

...Daum explores the book's vignettes from three different angles: There is the idealized way Lucinda wants the scene to unfold: the fumbling, awkward way it actually happens (and here the author's comic genius shines most...

...Sent to cover the growing use of the jitter-inducing drug methamphetamine among housewives in the Midwest, she is seduced by Prairie City, with its beguiling cast of characters and vast open spaces...

...If Lucinda lampoons anything, it is the city she left: Her emaciated, tyrannical senior producer, Faye Figaro, emerges as a hilarious caricature...

...It is easy to see why, on occasion, Daum digresses to a fault...

...The white cashmere and the lip gloss gave her a Love's Baby Soft quality...

...That had been the pact, no getting upset for six months, no breaking down, no admission of error...

...What Lucinda finds, of course, is that the reality of contemporary "prairie living" is far from old-fashioned rusticity and dropping into a quaint General Store to pick up a quart of milk...

...To the disillusioned New Yorker, it seems, even the most banal aspects of suburbia can feel novel and endearing...

...Then I slapped my wrist with the plastic coffee stirrer...

...And conversations with her city friends float brightly on the surface, never moving beyond their dating woes or trite gossip...

...But that authenticity is dangerously pocked with an outsider's grandiose fantasies: "I would be a home slice of a woman, the kind of woman Lyle Lovett might write a song about, the kind of woman Willa Cather might have lusted after...

...Later, when Christine all but steals the show at a book club meeting, Daum ups the ante: "Sue arrived with Christine and immediately everyone swarmed around Christine as if she were a visitor from a remote Polynesian village, pawing her Brooks Brothers' overcoat and her Isotoner gloves...

...When she does lapse into bigcity smugness she is quick to call herself out on it: "It's possible...

...She soon relinquishes the homespun reverie in favor of suburban curiosity, a shift Daum deftly captures: "Something almost mystical had happened to me...

...It would be shortchanging Daum's talents, though, to say a rural setting alone separates her from the pack...

...Given her incriminating wit and penchant for the well-turned phrase, monitoring her bite must have proved difficult...

...tasted like lunch at a school cafeteria...

...But she distinguishes herself from the pop fiction herd...

...strip malls and supermarkets dot the landscape as frequently as cornfields and farmhouses...

...and finally, the often questionable rationalization Lucinda allows herself in order to sleep at night...

...Even though Prairie City was hot and dreary and the food...

...For all its silliness, this is a somewhat innovative take on modern American living: By now, the image of the restless townie aching to hit the big city is burned into our consciousness, but how many young novelists are prepared to pay homage to the subtle beauty of the mall...

...Armed only with tenuous familial relations and a dissolving communication route to her friends back East, Lucinda is clearly being set up to experience an honest-to-goodness Midwestern existential crisis: the stomach-dropping panic that comes with realizing one is free...

...Lucinda's resolution to keep a poker face appeal's to be Daum willing her character toward resilience...

...Almost like anotherperson...

...Urban Fiction" calls for a few key plot ingredients: The protagonist should be young, female and single, sashaying her way through the entertainment, fashion or publishing world...

...Meanwhile, one giddily hopes Barnes & Noble will set up a "Rural Fiction" shelf where The Quality of Life Report might sit, just downwind of its city counterparts, isolated and content...

...Enter now Lucinda Trout, her fictional heroine, a 29-year-old girl Friday turning out hackneyed pieces on bridal registry etiquette and the rise of lunch-hour sushi for a local morning television show, New York Up Early...

...No predictable two-dimensional characters and wild hyperbole here...

...But the author delivers a palpable promise that she is not yet done with us...

...I wasn't allowed to ask...

...One might easily shrug off the lightstepping Daum with the throwaway phrase "she's very readable"—meaning to suggest that she has written a book to drag along on a beach vacation or read late at night in bed, dipping cookies in warm milk...

...Mason Clay...

...Reviewed by Cindy Price Freelance writer and critic There is a freshly designated shelf at Barnes & Noble stocked with slim volumes sporting candy-colored jackets meant to lure well-heeled, educated women...

...she should have a love interest to hurl her scattershot angst upon...

...The town's inner circle (a delightfully quirky group of civic-minded Lefties) embraces her as the new "it girl," and somewhere amid the monthly book club meetings and outdoor barbecues her attitude starts to soften...

...her writing is sharp and playful, yet decidedly careful...

...She has avoided treading heavily into melodramatic waters, opting instead for a tap-dancing approach—often choosing wit over sincerity, projection over reflection...

...With her heroine under fire, Daum paints a sharply un-PC portrait of newcomer Christine, a pretty, dimwitted black girl from Des Moines: "She was extremely attractive, but in an overly wellkept, almost droidlike way...

...and looking back, it's not only possible but true, and it makes me wince) that I just felt superior...

...In the autobiographical title essay of her previous book, My Misspent Youth, Daum described leaving New York for Lincoln, Nebraska, to pursue a more sincere (or at least less expensive) lifestyle...

...In the end this is to be forgiven, for the quiet nuances— the tiny misgivings, the stinging asides, the faux pas obsessed over a moment too long—are what lend credence to her tale...

...When Lucinda's façade begins to crumble (a failing relationship ranks low on the measuring stick of tragedy, but as any pop psychologist will tell you, all heartbreak is subjective), Daum has her couched in such a fat layer of defense mechanisms that she has trouble confiding in us the true extent of her sorrow...

...The bulk of Lucinda's serious problems, though, revolve around her shaky relationship with a local...

...Self-incriminations aside, other troubles soon arise...

...Rather than handing Prairie City over to buffoonery, Daum lovingly explores the multilayered existence of its colorful inhabitants...

...Her whipsmart, outrageously funny writing is a good deal better than that of her peers...

...She exuded an aura that hovered somewhere between Vanessa Williams and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice...

...the blandness of the town and the flat land that surrounded it were making me feel alive and exotic...

...and the big city, in all its wondrous pomp and promise, should not merely be the backdrop but the imp fueling her frenzied misadventures...

...She skillfully avoids the kinks of the debut novel...

...Lucinda presents a clear, if exaggerated image of what she is running away from, and an even clearer picture of the authenticity she is looking for...

...She convinces her producers to let her do a series aptly named "The Quality of Life Report" that would realize the heartland dream for her cosmo-swilling viewers back East...

...This refreshing departure brings to mind Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, which once reminded England that there was life outside London...

...Lucinda could be accused of not delving deeply enough into her disappointment with Mason, but her buoyancy is cleverly affected: "What was I doing in this place...

...When her vision of picket fence romance turns sour, Lucinda recounts her story with the salty schizoid fervor of the present-day romantic—half wry and self-preserving, half pining and teary-eyed...

...Eventually, through sheer force of will, Lucinda does manage to put together something close to her idyllic vision of Prairie City life—a farm on the outskirts of town, a woodsy, eccentric boyfriend, and a modest assortment of pets fresh off the set of Hee Haw...