And Now You Can Go (1993) by Vendela Vida

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

And Now You Can Go (1993)

by Vendela Vida

Riverside Park, Manhattan New York

New York: 48/105

Manhattan: 6/34

This debut novel by the woman who married Dave Eggers (and co-founded The Believer), didn't do much for me.  Also, I question the placement in Riverside Park- where the narrator is mugged(?) at the beginning of the book by one of those criminals who only appears in the pages of literary fiction- yes, he points a gun at her, but he also cries and seems to be crying out for human contact.  Oh, the whimsy of authors of literary fiction.

This event happens in the first five pages of the book, after that Ellis- the 21 year old graduate student- spends the following 200 odd pages not getting over it.  And Now You Can Go was one of those novels that illustrates my complaints about much of American literary fiction- a young character, more or less privileged, who suffers a mild trauma and then absolutely can not get over it for the rest of the book.  It also embodies a frequent trope of American literary fiction, which is a whole cast of characters who behave like they've never worked a day in their life and can't actually understand how that happens.

  Getting back to the placement of this book in New York City- much of it takes places in San Francisco and the Philippines. Vida, the author, is a Bay Area gal through and through. A puzzling choice for such a rich geographic area for literature.