HER

Zigman's third novel, a wild tale of a woman's "transformation... from bride-to-be to madwoman" is for anyone who's ever felt prewedding jitters and the pangs of obsessive jealousy. Having left her job at a teen magazine in New York City to pursue a quieter life in Washington, D.C., Zigman's narrator, Elise, meets her perfect guy—Donald, a reformed bond trader now teaching English at Sidwell Friends—on the Delta shuttle. Or her almost perfect guy. Donald's one fault is that he was engaged to Adrienne, and her name crops up in just about every conversation. Though Donald and Elise swiftly fall in love and begin planning their wedding, Elise cannot help obsessing over the brilliant and "horrifyingly gorgeous" former fiancée. But like the paranoiac who is being followed, Elise may have good reason to be jealous. Only months before the wedding, Adrienne takes a job in Washington, D.C., and reinserts herself into Donald's life, fueling Elise's jealousy as well as a slapstick plot having to do with Donald's dog, Elise's wedding dress and liposuction. Zigman is better at caricature than characterization, and her emphatic, read-aloud style sometimes falls flat on the page. Yet some scenes—when Donald meets Elise, for instance—are fresh and smart and almost perfect, as are many of her one-liners. (May)

Forecast:Zigman's Animal Husbandry was made into the movie Someone Like You (starring Ashley Judd), and Her, which smacks of My Best Friend's Wedding and other zany takes on upcoming nuptials, is begging to be sent to Hollywood, too. Zigman—who's as zippy with the one-liners in conversation as she is in writing—will plug her book on NPR and Today, and these appearances, plus certain attention in women's magazines, will win her new fans.