by:
LOH, SANDRA TSING

Publisher:
Three Rivers Press
Published:May, 2002
ISBN:0609809512
Format:Paperback
Pages:240

Description: From Publishers Weekly
With Tsing Loh (Depth Takes a Holiday) behind the wheel, readers are in for a crackling, witty, loop-the-loop rideno air bags, no seatbeltsacross the interior landscape of an almost-40 writer coping with the pressures and irritations of modern society. She targets such social phenomena as the Zone Diet, health clubs, plastic surgery and mass joke e-mails. Old standbys like marriage, older siblings, money and advertising are deftly dealt with, though she teeters on overkill with her primary obsession, aging. Tsing Loh, whose humorous neuroses will be familiar to listeners to public radio's Morning Edition and Marketplace, struggles with the friction between where she thinks her career, marriage, health and beauty should be and where they actually rate, with hilarious fallout. This self-described downwardly mobile nonachiever views the world through "dung-colored glasses," though her message brightens as she frees herself of youthful goals and comes to accept her age and station. Tsing Loh incorporates into her text crossed-out sentences, e-mail correspondence and outtakes from her television forays. Unfortunately, her frenetic pace and humor slow in the final section. And while the book's title suggests the looming presence of an oppressive Van Nuys, the Los Angeles suburb lacks the full intensity of Tsing Loh's ferocious stare, save for some early references (e.g., it regularly ranks as one of the worst places to live in America). But that unfulfilled promise shrinks in the face of Tsing Loh's white-knuckled, dirty-fingernailed imagination. (May)Forecast: Tsing Loh will launch her new book at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, which she's emceeing, and will tour the West Coast. Readers throughout the rest of the nation should expect to hear Tsing Loh bemoaning Van Nuys on the radio, the first printing of 20,000 copies should sell briskly.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the

Hardcover edition.

Product Description:
Sandra Tsing Loh, a self-described neurotic, nonachieving, downwardly mobile "Dumpy," has started to come out of denial over the fact that she does not live in Provence. Not only does she not live in Provence, she doesn't even live in a nice part of Los Angeles. This upper-lower-middle-class suburb in the sun-swept grid of the San Fernando Valley, consistently ranked one of the worst places to live in America, whose night sky is flamed by a million fast-food neon signs and whose streets are chockablock with carnicerias, taquerias, and pupuserias, will, she's pretty sure, never be Provence.

In A Year in Van Nuys, we find Sandra, an obscure writer, blocked at page 100 of her Great American Novel - the one that, when finished, will bring her fame, fortune, and the requisite country house in Provence. She's 35 and she has eyebags like Bert Lahr, a too-rich, too-thin sister who torments her about her lack of initiative, and a $300-an-hour Malibu therapist. She writes for a failing women's website - Amelia.com - makes a disastrous appearance on CNN, entertains a network's idea about making a sitcom of her life, especially her eyebags, and watches new and old acquaintances alike succeed wildly at various pursuits. And this is merely the tip of the iceberg of a year in Sandra's life. Divided by season - The Winter of Our Discontent, Spring Without Bending Your Knees, Summer Where We Winter, and Fall of Our Dearest Expectations - Sandra's narrative charts a hilarious course through the anti-Hollywood, a morbid inferno that none other than Robert Redford called a "furnace that could destroy any creative thought that managed to creep into your brain."

The result of this journey? Not thinner thighs, smoother skin, or a kind of space-age Zen Buddhist acceptance. (Notwithstanding the fact that a wise [gay] man notes that even Madonna has an inner Van Nuys.) No, the true grail turns out to be, unbelievably enough, Maturity. Which coincides, sadly, with the official end of Youth. Which, after a brief mourning period, turns out to be an odd relief for Sandra.