Not Ready for Prime Time

As Askari's funky first novel opens, it's been 19 years since Justine Nichols's mother abandoned her to the care of her alcoholic aunt Lenore; she's never met her father. Now 22, Justine is sassy, independent and sometimes disturbed; she's living in Portland, Maine, where she works by day at a bookstore and by night as lead singer for an all-girl rock band, the Purple Nurples. Still hurt and confused by her mother's desertion, she obsesses over her sketchy childhood memories, falls in with bad men, feels sorry for herself and constantly compares her life to a popular sitcom, My Way or the Highway, which features a single mother's nurturing relationship with her daughter. When playwright Blake Connor comes into her life, it looks like Justine might find true love, and she decides to test her new relationship by confessing five secrets to him. Then she summons the strength to explore one of those secrets, one that involves the identity of her long-lost mother. Askari's novel is as alternately winning and muddled as Julia's life. Self-conscious and melodramatic prose mix with genuinely odd, original and amusing material; pedestrian observations coexist with insightful ones; and the author's tendency to provide entire biographies to introduce each new character functions like a bad writing school exercise in how to slow the action. Justine's obsession with the TV sitcom drags in tedious details about the show. Yet Askari's dialogue is topically funny and his comments on the disturbing relationship between TV and real life can be shrewd. Twentysomethings may enjoy the travails of riot-grrl Justine's search for herself, but some may find this book's title an apt criticism of Askari's debut. (July)