I read a fun book over the holidays. A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out by Sally Franson. A friend told me about the book, which she had read after seeing Franson on the Swedish reality show, “Allt för Sverige” (The Great Swedish Adventure; season 10), a show that features Americans of Swedish descent who go to Sweden to learn about their family histories and that I have yet to watch. But back to the book. Casey, the protagonist, is an advertising executive working on a campaign to link literary authors with products their words will help sell. The strategy is genius until it’s not. Then Casey has to find her way out and save herself in the process.

Franson’s writing was an intriguing blend of chick-lit plotting punctuated with deep literary reflection, something I didn’t expect in a book with the cover that it had.

For example, while attending a reading in a bookstore, Casey, thinks about what it takes to mend when you’re broken. Because she is broken, because she is mending.

“But for a second there, in the bookstore, when time spanned vertically instead of horizontally, and love was at the center of the line, I forgot all about that.

It’s so simple, I know, but perhaps all it takes to mend, in the end, is people who love you. Who find you when you are lost, who come out with a flashlight when you’ve gone too far into the woods. They call out your name, you hear it, you are reminded of yourself. They remind you. They remember you. They re-member you.

And so you return the call. You put yourself back together again. Because, my God, you love them too.”

~~~