Normal Girl: A Novel

A spare, druggy novel of manners written by a precocious, reportedly druggy undergraduate: ring any bells? With her first novel, Normal Girl, Molly Jong-Fast may not owe a debt to society, but she certainly owes one to Bret Easton Ellis. Her heroine is Miranda Woke, child of a socialite mother who's "thin, in that willowy, dehydrated way that all socialites are thin" and an absentee father--"a short, fat, balding Jewish man who's rich, rich, rich, and famous, famous, famous." If her parental descriptors seem a little surface-y, well, that's Miranda, a girl whose A-list life consists of working in a gallery, going to parties, and consuming all the coke and heroin she can get her mitts on.

The book's rather sketchy plot opens with Miranda attending the funeral of her addict boyfriend. In chatty prose that clips right along, we follow her through a series of parties, dinners, and lots and lots of trips to the bathroom. As often as not, she ends the evening flat on her back: "Dosage has never been my forte." The gallery sinecure sees very little page time; it's mostly an excuse for Miranda to attend art-world parties and be snide. (The weakest parts of the novel come when Jong-Fast tries her hand at roman à clef: referring to Julian Schnabel as "Schnozzle" just doesn't give the required frisson.)

But life isn't all dry cleaning and speedballs; things are starting to fall apart for this party girl. "The loneliness," she says, "may kill me before the drugs ever have their chance." Miranda winds up in Hazelden, where she rehabs wittily and successfully. Jong-Fast, with the earnest vigor of the 20-year-old she was when she wrote Normal Girl, seems to buy the recovery line utterly. Maybe that's because she, the druggy daughter of a famous parent, has said in interviews that she's been down just the same road as Miranda. She's told her story with a modicum of grace; perhaps her future novels will actually be good. --Claire Dederer