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Customer Reviews of Layover

Sex as an Rx for cynicism
Lisa Zeidner's "Layover" is lean and more than a little mean, largely because it's from the point of view of Zeidner's first-person protagonist, Claire Newbold, whose only child was killed in a car accident some time before the story begins. It's about battling the urge to escape from grief into cynicism, but don't be put off. Zeidner has a light touch and a sharp sense of humor, and she'ss anything but maudlin.

Claire is middle-aged, a traveling saleswoman of high-tech medical supplies. Early in the novel she begins a hotel-hopping journey of self-discovery that jeopardizes her job, marriage and sanity. What sets her off is a confession by her surgeon husband that he has had an affair with a woman colleague, and what helps bring her back from the brink are sexual encounters with an 18-year-old boy and then with the boy's father. Zeidner manages to make both encounters believable.

There's good dialogue and sharply amusing observations about American life at the end of the 20th century, but the biggest surprise is the skill with which Zeidner writes about sex. "Layover" is playfully and insightfully erotic, a quality most American writers can't seem to imagine, let alone capture on the page.

I didn't quite like Claire - she's smug and intolerant of human frailties, a vagabond with a big bank account - but I believed her grief and admired the way Zeidner handled her struggle to overcome the sense that she and everyone else are doomed to suffer in solitude. Claire wants to return to normal life but is plagued by the feeling that she knew her husband "so well I couldn't see him anymore. I knew him the way I knew myself. All of our years together - they weren't money in the bank. They were cash in a mattress that could burn."

"Layover" is funny and sad, smart and brave. Read it if you like fiction that explores what it means to be human.

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If you don't laugh you'll cry, but bet on fits of both.
Lisa Zeidner's LAYOVER is the kind of book you read straight through, hardly stopping to feed yourself or make a trip to the bathroom--it's that good, that engrossing. Zeidner's sparse, beautifully crafted prose is right on the money--the work of an accomplished storyteller and, if this novel is any indication, a closet comedienne. (Let's face it, there simply aren't many writers around who can make you cringe and guffaw in the same breath.) I suspect that Claire Newbold, the novel's grieving, unstable protagonist, will be heralded as the prototypical character for the next century, and as such, she's worth listening to. Kudos to Lisa Zeidner for creating a truly sympathetic character whose behavior we, as readers, may also see fit to condemn (even as Claire runs red light after red light, there we are, slouched in the front seat, glad to be along for the ride). Like the book itself, Claire is smart, funny, and brutally honest. LAYOVER is long overdue.

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An Awesome novel!
While you can't judge a book by it's cover you apparently can sell one that way. I was intrigued by the photograph on the cover of this paperback- up close and in focus a black industrial style telephone-off the hook. In the background a female nude-pensive and unfocused. It appealed to all of the restlessness I felt. Midlife-disconnected and not quite focused.

The book rocks! Descriptions were apt-even startling! The author, Lisa Zeidner, has great deftness at drawing clear word pictures that give both visual clues and emotive insight into her characters. The starkness of the setting helped somewhat offset the maudlin tendencies of a story told in first person by a person who is somewhat deranged. This book is awesome -- highly recommended! Another recent fav: THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez. As I like saying to my boyfriend: SHUT UP AND READ!