Just Arrived! Great Debut Novel!

You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr

Summary
Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of quiet Los Angeles privilege, the wife of Hollywood executive Howard Rosenbaum and mother of their seventeen-year-old son, Sam. Years ago Anne and Howard met studying literature at Columbia—she, the daughter of a British diplomat from London, he a boy from an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Now on sleek blue California evenings, Anne attends halogen-lit movie premieres on the arm of her powerful husband. But her private life is lived in the world of her garden, reading books.

When one of Howard's friends, the head of a studio, asks Anne to make a reading list, she casually agrees—though, as a director reminds her, "no one reads in Hollywood." To her surprise, they begin calling: screen-writers; producers, from their bungalows; and agents, from their plush offices on Wilshire and Beverly. Soon Anne finds herself leading an exclusive book club for the industry elite. Emerging gradually from her seclusion, she guides her readers into the ideas and beauties of Donne, Yeats, Auden, and Mamet, with her brilliant and increasingly bold opinions. But when a crisis of identity unexpectedly turns an anguished Howard back toward the Orthodoxy he left behind as a young man, Anne must set out to save what she values above all else: her husband's love.

At once fiercely intelligent and emotionally grip-ping, You or Someone Like You confronts the fault lines between inherited faith and personal creed, and, through the surprising transformation of one exceptional, unforgettable woman, illuminates literature's power to change our lives.

Review
"Smart, literate, and humane...deftly melds an entertaining tour through...the culture of the moment with an original investigation into the timeless themes of great literature and the painful, private fault lines of deep marital love. In the process, he creates a heroine that few readers will forget." (John Burnham Schwartz, author of The Commoner and Reservation Road)

"Provocative...weighs in on the issue of identity politics and also makes a powerful case for why great books are a great danger to small minds." (NPR's Fresh Air )

"You Or Someone Like You is a pitch-perfect, often very funny novel about why, in this crazy world, we still bother to read. It's for anyone who defiantly clings to the belief that a book can change our lives." (David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl)

"In his first, well crafted and thoroughly enjoyable novel, New York Times scent critic Chandler Burr presents a sweeping spectrum, set in Hollywood, of contemporary religious and social issues...it is well worth the read." (Jewish Book World)

"A true celebration of intellect.examines the personal decision each of us must make to run from, or embrace, our identity." (Publishers Weekly)

"A savvy novel that deals with Hollywood from a cultural rather than a tabloid perspective." (Kirkus Reviews *starred*)

"[Burr's] field work serves the novel well, with depictions of Los Angeles culture that feel spot-on...It's a genuine thrill to read what people like Albert Brooks, to give just one of many examples, might think of Jude the Obscure..." (Time Out New York)