Underneath It All
Margo Candela, . . Kensington, $14 (345pp) ISBN 978-0-758-21570-3
Since leaving hometown L.A., Jacquelyn "Jacqs" Sanchez graduated from Berkeley, married and divorced a gringo and is now working as the personal assistant to the San Francisco mayor's wife. Jacqs hopes to parlay this gig into a job in politics, but a series of unsuitable men, the lingering pain of her divorce and her friends' romantic crises distract her. Candela is an engaging writer, particularly when she manages to make a family full of depressives seem funny, but nothing much happens—characters appear, display their quirk and disappear—and Jacqs, who forever regrets not having gone to law school, is unconvincingly stuck wondering what she should do with her life. With its mildly degrading personal assistantship and frequent fashion name-drops, Candela's debut novel skirts
Reviewed on: 10/23/2006
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 352 pages - 978-0-7582-8173-9