High Drama in Fabulous Toledo

Book excerpt: A fast-acting antidote to reality, High Drama in Fabulous Toledo is a novel about characters on the brink of impossible chaos. When Ellen, a postmodern everygirl, daydreams her way out of monotony and into the hands of inept kidnappers, she finds she prefers captivity to her own predictable future. Life, for her, is a box to be filled. But by what or whom? Ultimately, faced with defining herself either as victim or manipulator, Ellen opts for both, igniting a chain reaction of volatile identities that levels everyone around her. Ellen's kidnappers, a bouncer named Stef, and his gal-pal Molly, imagine themselves as a barbarian warrior and an electro-sex princess. They deliver Ellen into the hands of Jay, a cybergeek who needs a bride to fulfill his suburban dream. Against all logic, Ellen agrees to marry Jay, fearing that this may be her last chance to avoid a collision with lifelong normality. James's postfeminist fiction is smart and accessible. Her trippy narrative packs a wallop with its wry, skin-tight prose, at once insightful and corrosive to reality. Like a postmodern Flannery O'Connor story. High Drama in Fabulous Toledo is unafraid to shake the balance of order and chaos,