Perhaps the elements of the story could sound like "too much": Lucy's a privileged daughter of a prominent fixture in the Russian mob scene. She's working as a children's department head librarian in a dot-on-the-map town out of a determination not to take anything from her parents. Lucy's apartment is above the local live theater, run by the fun-loving and flamboyant local gay guy. Her best friend is a co-worker in a wheelchair who's often mistaken for mentally-challenged. And her star reader is just 10 years old and assumed by everyone to be homosexual -- especially by his insanely religious Stepfordy mother.
Somehow, it all just works and I was hooked less than a dozen pages in. Although the set-up and the main thrust of the story (road trip/abduction with the librarian and the kid who's escaping a family who doesn't get him...so much so that they are sending him to a type of "pray out the gay" workshop for pre-teens) sounds ridiculous, it's absolutely lovely, funny, and, in a weird way, real.
A
