Staff Pick
Where do I even begin with Mona? She is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, trapped beneath couch cushions. She is my fictional soulmate. As a cleaning lady in Taos, there's no mess she can't handle... except for the one that makes up her life. Her path is littered with painful memories, self-destructive tendencies, and repulsive exes — but she stays afloat. She takes self-portraits in her clients' homes, wearing their clothes, and only gets caught once. She holds long conversations with the voice in her head, who happens to be Terry Gross. She gets hurt and keeps going and finds joy. Delightfully weird, dark, and sad, Vacuum in the Dark is everything I want in a book! Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From the Whiting Award-winning author of Pretend I'm Dead and one of the most exhilarating new voices in fiction, a new hilarious, edgy, and brilliant one-of-a-kind novel about a cleaning lady named Mona and her struggles to move forward in life. Mona is twenty-six and cleans houses for a living in Taos, New Mexico. She moved there mostly because of a bad boyfriend--a junkie named Mr. Disgusting, long story--and her efforts to restart her life since haven't exactly gone as planned. For one thing, she's got another bad boyfriend. This one she calls Dark, and he happens to be married to one of Mona's clients. He also might be a little unstable.
Dark and his wife aren't the only complicated clients on Mona's roster, either. There's also the Hungarian artist couple who--with her addiction to painkillers and his lingering stares--reminds Mona of troubling aspects of her childhood, and some of the underlying reasons her life had to be restarted in the first place. As she tries to get over the heartache of her affair and the older pains of her youth, Mona winds up on an eccentric, moving journey of self-discovery that takes her back to her beginnings where she attempts to unlock the key to having a sense of home in the future.
The only problems are Dark and her past. Neither is so easy to get rid of.
A constantly surprising, laugh-out-loud funny novel about an utterly unique woman dealing with some of the most universal issues in America today, Vacuum in the Dark is an unforgettable, astonishing read from one of the freshest voices in fiction today.