Combining sly humor with an urban edge, Kate Christensen's In the Drink tells the story of a resolutely clear-eyed young woman who makes a complete mess of her life, and lives to tell the tale.

The novel's heroine is the smart, pretty, underemployed, and single Claudia Steiner, personal secretary to Genevieve del Castellano, a terrifying, glamorous semi-lunatic who has it in for her for reasons she can't even begin to fathom. William, her best friend, considers Claudia his pal, his confidante, his sidekick in matters amatory, which would be fine if she weren't desperately in love with him herself. Further complicating matters is Claudia's old lover John Threadgill, an unpublished epic poet whose marriage to a Romanian stripper named Rima hasn't kept him from trying to seduce Claudia at every opportunity.

Claudia came to New York City fresh out of college, buoyed along by her dream of becoming a journalist. But her starry-eyed notion of Claudia Steiner, Reporter on the Beat, quickly vanished into the ozone when she couldn't muster the requisite hard-bitten, white-hot urgency, the chain-smoking, the yelling, and the cutthroat story-mongering. Now, at the age of twenty-nine, she finds herself adrift in the city, careening dangerously from catastrophe to catastrophe. Desperately trying to keep her head above water, Claudia has little to rely on but a wry sense of humor, a keen appreciation of the medicinal properties of whiskey, and something more subtle--a persistent little flame of belief in herself, which makes a happy ending seem possible even in this most unforgiving of cities.

Hilarious, compassionate, and keenly observed, In the Drink is the enormously entertaining debut of a startlingly talented young writer.

"The smart, urban and aimless have found their heroine in this charmingly original debut novel --. Though often poignant, her memorable story never cloys and is enlivened with refreshingly unsentimental humor and a sparkling ensemble of skillfully drawn contemporary urban characters."
-Publishers Weekly

"[Heroine] Claudia Steiner is a depressive Bridget Jones; she's smarter and more introspective but with the same Gen X angst. Christensen's first novel is intelligent, witty, and completely readable."
-Library Journal

"Claudia Steiner has to be the freshest anti-heroine I've read in a long time--.This is no depressing drunk-noir; it's a great description of real life--the good, the manageable and the awful."
-Jane magazine

"-a lively, lusty first novel."
--Mademoiselle

"Hilarious, decadent, painfully honest, and sparkling with wit and originality, In the Drink is the perfect '90s love story, a tale for anyone who's ever had a few too many shots of whiskey, bad jobs, mornings after, and pinings for that person they can't stop thinking about. With this exuberant first novel, Kate Christensen bursts onto the literary scene."
-Cathi Hanauer, author of My Sister's Bones

"Kate Christensen's language bristles with poetry; her wit crackles with insight. This rite of passage to the literary and sexual landscape of New York in the 1990s is easily one of the best first novels I've ever read."
-Arthur Nersesian, managing editor, The Portable Lower East Side

Kate Christensen grew up in California and Arizona and is a graduate of Reed College. She lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, raising vicious pet fish and working on another novel. In the Drink is her first book.