I’m a big giant fan of Fiona Maazel. Her debut novel Last Last Chance, published by FSG in 2009 is a slithering gem. She writes with a kind of frank modesty, if that makes sense, like a wise old neighbor that isn’t ashamed to tell you when they had their pants pulled down. In her debut, she toggles between a global epidemic story, Christian Fundamentalism and coming of age in the time of barren vaginas. I don’t think Ms. Maazel has ever made me blush more than she has in this story of hers which appears on the Electric Reading: Recommended Reading site today.
I am also a big fan of spying. Listening to other people talk and then writing it down. I often sit in diners and coffee shops and transcribe what I’m hearing and work it into a piece of fiction. Who will know? Nobody, that’s who. This story is bee sting accurate, and should be read twice. Our narrator runs through her past as a linguist in a remote tracking station in Australia. She sits in a common as dirt building listening to satellite transmissions from all over the world. She is the person collecting raw data that will be used to start a war. She is hip to the language that she’s listening to, but in fact, only understands every third word and is going to fill in the blanks.
Of course these men and women are lonely, very lonely, and working long hours. So what do you think about when you get lonely? Sex. It doesn’t matter who is around, male or female. By the time things go underground, and my blushing starts, (yours will too) I think it’s safe to say that I really wished Ms. Maazel would write faster, and on a regular basis, at least where I could read her weekly, (maybe she does?).
Next year her second novel will be published by FSG, Woke Up Lonely.
