Galant, Debra.
Fear and Yoga in New Jersey.
St. Martin's. Mar. 2008.
c.272p. ISBN 978-0-312-36725-1.
$23.95.
Nina is a self-employed yoga instructor in an affluent part of Essex County, NJ. She caters to the blond wives of rich Manhattan businessmen and is secretly ashamed of her Long Island upbringing as a Jewish American Princess. Now she's a Unitarian, pleased with her own open-mindedness and environmental outlook. "She drove a Prius, recycled religiously, eschewed synthetics, shopped organic, drank bottled water and bought all her stationery from third-world countries." When her husband loses his job as a weather forecaster at the airport, Nina's planets go out of alignment and all sorts of bad karma comes her way: a yoga student falls and threatens to sue, a hurricane in Florida scares her meddling mother into a surprise visit, and her son starts acting strangely after attending a rich classmate's bat mitzvah. Galant, whose first novel, Rattled, proved that she had a talent for zany suburban social satire, strikes again. This time her characters are slightly more sympathetic, if pathetic, but the action is madcap and nonstop. Recommended for all public libraries.- Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L, WA.
