Fun and Frivolous
Readers seeking a light-hearted, farcical foray into twenty-something directionless misadventure will find much to enjoy in Mary Pauline Lowry’s epistolary novel, The Roxy Letters. The book consists of a series of one-way notes and letters between the eponymous main character and her ex-boyfriend, Everett. As the book opens, Roxy is reluctantly housing her ex as a temporary tenant to subsidize her meager income as a deli worker at Whole Foods. What begins as an effort to communicate some basic house rules morphs into more of a personal diary that delineates Roxy’s various escapades. An aspiring artist stuck in her own slacker mentality, Roxy’s insecurity and lack of motivation about her identity and future shines through in her writing. When she decides to embark on a crusade to protest the gentrification of Austin (epitomized by the opening of a Lululemon store in her neighborhood), she meets an interesting new friend who inspires her to take more risks in life and love. The Roxy Letters wants to be a more risqué and Americanized version of Bridget Jones’ Diary, and it somewhat succeeds in eliciting the same frantic, cringy tone. The form of the novel becomes a bit cumbersome and forced as the book goes on, however, and it becomes awkward and too expositional. The reader is expected to be tolerant of some extremely far-fetched and contrived scenarios and the repetitious discussion of sexual topics become excessive and tiresome. Lowry does a good job poking fun of young adulthood and the entitlement of progressive liberalism in the 2010s, and The Roxy Letters is certainly a fun read. The conclusion brings all the characters together in a chorus with a well-wrapped happy ending that is a refreshing change from the typical angst seen in some contemporary novels that take themselves too seriously. This book would appeal to fans of romantic and slapstick comedies who don’t mind some explicit sexual content and are prepared to endure some harmlessly unbelievable plotlines.
Thanks to the author, Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss Plus for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
