cover image I WISH I NEVER MET YOU

I WISH I NEVER MET YOU

Denise Wheatley, . . Touchstone, $12 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-5056-6

Offering up a set of cautionary tales that are "a generous contribution from me to society," Wheatley's nameless African-American heroine describes the fate of 13 hapless suitors in this flimsy, sour debut. Each man suffers from a physical, emotional or maturational deficiency—or a combination thereof—that eventually destroys the relationship; each story is followed by a scrambled moral of sorts advising readers who not to get with ("Bottom Damn Line: Fuck a fence-straddling pansy who makes you feel like a manly reject"). The narrator's men include seriously overweight Doug, ugly Horace and effeminate Ernest, as well as a series of types: liar, married man, unwed father, player. The book concludes with a final episode in which the narrator gets what many will conclude she deserves. Wheatley's antiheroine is not quite the edgier, black Bridget Jones the cover copy claims; instead, she is abrasive and unpleasant. "When I take revenge, there are no regrets," she writes, and her remorseless attitude, rather than confident and bold, seems smug and superior. In one particularly unsavory episode, she forces a man who does her wrong to swallow a mouthful of urine. She eventually admits to being an "unbalanced woman," but the reader has long since lost interest in her persistent, self-induced misfortunes. Agent, Carolyn Grayson. (Aug.)