A deeply affecting, darkly funny debut
novel that brilliantly captures solitude, sex,
and the contemporary single woman

Isabelle, a woman in her thirties without any of the trappings of a "grown-up" life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend. She also becomes a "mystery shopper" for a temp agency, posing as a variety of potential tenants for newly built suburban communities to access their exclusive services. Enchanted by the possiblities of disguise, Isabelle spins a web of lies that keeps the world at a distance until she unearths long-kept secrets that force her to rethink everything she thought she knew.

Insightful and entertaining, this gracefully written novel explores a generation defined by reinvention in a landscape gradually being devoured by developers. Depicting the comedy of being a grown-up still coming of age, Maud Casey beautifully and evocatively reveals how people narrate their lives to counter the chaotic randomness of modern existence.

"Isabelle is a millennial treasure. The journey from child to woman . . . is poignant and funny.".(Anne Rivers Siddons)

?Casey is a stand-up philosopher posing vexing questions about human existence. She?s funny, inventive?dazzling narrative dare.?(The New York Times Book Review)

"Full of lovely sentences, empathetic characters. This story is as engaging and scintillating as one told by a best friend.(Darcey Steinke)

"This is a wonderful account of our need to both invent and reinvent ourselves. A deft and generous book.(Margot Livesey)

?A startling debut. [Casey?s] fresh voice emerges like a song that?s bound to be a hit.?(Virginia Quarterly Review)

Maud Casey received a Pushcart Prize 1997 Special Mention, and her stories have appeared in The Threepenny Review and The Georgia Review. Casey received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Arizona She lives in Brooklyn, New York.