Pissing in a River

An ex-pat punk enthusiast contends with mental illness, homophobia, and post-9/11 politics in this third novel from the author of Sister Safety Pin and Anxiety Attack. Ever since she first heard them%E2%80%94while listening to Heart's debut album%E2%80%94Amanda has been in pursuit of the voices in her head, a British duo whose presence has helped her through the worst moments of her obsessive-compulsive disorder. Restless, repulsed by American politics, and vaguely hopeful about finding the voices, Amanda moves to London, where she meets Nick and Melissa while saving the former from a would-be rapist. The trio become fast friends, and Amanda's fledgling mental health is soon threatened by a new complication: her "will-shattering, soul-crunching" love for Melissa, who is both straight and unaware of Amanda's complicated past. Spanning decades of controversial U.S. policy (Amanda is an AIDS activist in the %E2%80%9880s, and an opponent of the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay in the aughts), the novel is as much a manifesto as a romance, as well as an homage to punk music's legacy of challenging the status quo. "These songs were the way we communicated and understood each other," explains Amanda, who quotes song lyrics incessantly. "We lived our lives according to how we felt when we listened to them." (June)