Review by Booklist Review
A year after arriving in America, Viola, the Polish narrator of Zyzak's saucy and shrewd caper novel, picks up a strangely glamorous and voluble hitchhiker in L.A. and says her name is Viva. Roberta, called Bobby, is also "Made in Poland" by some cosmic quirk, but unlike Viva, she is wealthy, cosmopolitan, and decadent. She offers Viva a vaguely defined job as assistant and Viva moves into the bizarrely outfitted, crumbling mansion occupied by Bobby, a former gallerist; her husband, Sleeper, a former film director turned financier; and Lance, their cynical gay friend. The goings-on in this surreal household become increasingly antic and cutting, the conversations hilarious and treacherous as Viva becomes a sexual pawn, then an accomplice as she and Bobby, in cahoots with a Russian oligarch, take possession of a stolen Vermeer. As the breakneck action moves to Europe, the dangers and eroticism grow more complicated and Zyzak's nimble and lacerating social critiques intensify. Electric with clever plays on language and accents, identities and desires, crimes petty and hellish, Zyzak's geopolitical romp is canny, sexy, and mordant.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Zyzak (The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel) returns with a rollicking tale of sex, money, and art theft. One afternoon in Los Angeles, Polish immigrant Wioletta picks up a glamorous hitchhiker, a woman named Bobby Sleeper. Wioletta introduces herself as Viva, and Bobby offers her a job as her live-in assistant. Bobby; her retired filmmaker husband, Sebastian; and their flamboyant houseguest, a playwright named Lance, introduce Viva to sprezzatura ("the art of studied nonchalance," Lance explains). She quickly takes to their glitzy lifestyle, striking up sexual relationships with both Sebastian and Bobby, the latter of whom uses Viva as an accomplice to "fake-steal" a valuable Vermeer from her ex-husband, a Russian oligarch. The painting itself is missing from a German museum, and Bobby and the oligarch have a scheme going to split the multimillion-dollar reward for its safe return. Things take a turn, however, when one of Bobby's other ex-husbands, Łyski, sneaks into her home, steals the painting from her closet, and absconds with it to Italy. Zyzak constructs a playful narrative, shuttling characters across the globe and into each other's beds, and she takes advantage of Bobby's loose-cannon nature to raise the stakes again and again. This is great fun. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A 21-year-old Polish woman wins the immigration lottery, then keeps getting lucky. As this unusual caper novel opens, our narrator, Viva--new to Los Angeles after a failed attempt to start her American life in Chicago--picks up a woman hitchhiking in a green cocktail dress on the 101. Bobby Sleeper turns out to be from Poland, too, though from a much wealthier and more cosmopolitan background. "At any given moment, half the population of LA is giving therapy to the other half," Bobby informs Viva when she takes her out to lunch in gratitude for the ride. "Fifty percent of LA is depressed. Only five percent of Bhutan is. You ever been here?…The hamachi salad's yummy." Later that day, Viva takes a position as live-in personal assistant to Bobby and her rich, hot husband, Sebastian Sleeper, a retired film director. Along with the couple's acerbic gay housemate, Lance, the group will engage in the daily custom of "spritzatura"--a Spritz Veneziano in the hot tub at dusk. One of many amusing aspects of Zyzak's tale is its perspective; though the action occurs in 2018, it's narrated from 2079, when Viva is 84, allowing for clever asides about how things "used to be" in our current time. Zyzak does an amazing job with Viva's narration--because her English is not perfect, her understanding of the hyperarticulate Bobby runs a little behind the reader's, though Viva has some insights she withholds until the very end (and a fine ending it is). The caper that sends the plot into overdrive involves The Lady Waiting, a (fictional) Vermeer painting stolen in a 2009 Berlin museum heist. Two of Bobby's ex-husbands and Bobby herself have become involved in a scheme to return it for the huge reward, $50,000 of which can be Viva's if she helps out. With its madcap plot, fantastic central characters, and White Lotus--style wealth porn (the kind where a character eats caviar off the kitchen floor after the jar falls out of the fridge), screenwriter Zyzak's second novel seems like catnip for Hollywood. Funny, original, worldly, and very cool. A standout. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
