Trip Sheets by Ellen Hawley

The publisher's description of Trip Sheets as 'funny' does a disservice to a thoughtful, realistic novel about desire and uncertainty. When Cath Rahven decides to stop sleeping with men, she hopes that her other meaningless habits will fall away too, and that she can be cleansed of everything she didn't consciously choose. She longs for 'an antidote to her entire history'; then she will be able to stop driving cabs and concentrate on writing her mystery novel, her main link with her dying father. This exhilarating sense of starting over fades almost as soon as she begins to sleep with women--one after another, randomly chosen, just like the men--and she is left feeling deflated. What finally pushes Cath into a promising new life won't be what she expects. An accomplished first novel, Trip Sheets is dryly humorous and refuses to provide easy answers to its protagonist's dilemma. --Regina Marler